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THE 

MYSTERY OF SLEEP 

/ BY 

JOHN BIGELOW, LLD. 



SECOND EDITION, REWRITTEN AND 
MUCH ENLARGED 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
1903 



THE UBR 


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Copyright, 1896, 1903, by Harper & Brothers. 

All rights reserved. 

Published February, 1903. 



" I have remembered thy name, O Lord, in the night, 
And have observed thy law."— Psalm cxix. 

"The night-time of the body is the daytime of the 
soul."— IAMBLICHUS 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

Why do we spend one-third of our lives in sleep ?- 
Prevalent notions fallacious 



CHAPTER II 

Dreams imply imperfect sleep — Jouffroy — Extraor- 
dinary activities of body and mind during perfect 
sleep — Dr. Hack Tuke on the exercise of thought 
during sleep — Professor Agassiz' dream — Thera- 
peutics of sleep 10 

CHAPTER III 

Sleep interrupts all conscious relations with the phenom- 
enal world, and thus becomes one of the vital proc- 
esses of spiritual regeneration — Nocturnal darkness 
an ally of sleep — Our transformation in sleep — Lu- 
cretius — Bryant's "Land of Dreams" — Voltaire — 
Venerable Bede — Swedenborg as a seer 21 

CHAPTER IV 

Most conspicuous changes wrought during sleep psy- 
chical, not physical — Seclusion from the world most 
perfect in sleep — Why the aged sleep less than others 
— Mysterious effects of sleep upon the demands of our 
V 



Contents 

PAGE 

appetites — Our greater endurance while sleeping 
than when awake — The need for sleep diminishes as 
the organization of our lives becomes more com- 
plex — Buffon — iEsculapius — Letter of Iamblichus 
— Mohammed — Cicero's dream 40 

CHAPTER V 

The most important events in human history initiated 
during sleep — Altruism first taught in sleep — Ex- 
traordinary spiritual uses of sleep recorded in the 
Bible 56 

CHAPTER VI 

Spiritual influence of sleep illustrated by its privation 
— Diseases resulting — Toussaint L'Ouverture's de- 
fence of Hayti — Difference in sleeping habits of 
domestic and of predatory animals — Low average 
of longevity among savages explained — Habits of 
venomous and non-venomous serpents contrasted 
— Prominence of sleep in the machinery of Shake- 
speare's plays — Dr. Wilkinson — Marie Manaceine 
— Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers — 
Alexander von Humboldt ... 77 

CHAPTER VII 

What is meant by God's resting on the seventh day 
of creation and enjoining the observance of the Sab- 
bath as a day of rest for his people 103 

CHAPTER VIII 

Prominence given to the morning hour in the Bible, 

and its spiritual significance 113 

vi 



Contents 
CHAPTER IX 

PAGE 

Our external and our internal memory — Coleridge's 
" body terrestrial " and " body celestial " — The opera- 
tions of our non-phenomenal life presumably as im- 
portant as those of our phenomenal life 130 

CHAPTER X 

In sleep we die daily — God alone is life — All causes are 
spiritual — All phenomena are results — Scipio's dream 
— Sleep and death twins . . . . „ «, a . 143 

CHAPTER XI 

"Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger 
of the hell of fire ' 166 

CHAPTER XII 

Why we are not permitted to be conscious of the ex- 
periences of the soul in sleep — How we should culti- 
vate sleep — Drugs hostile to sleep — Count Tolstoi 
on alcoholic stimulants — All virtues favor sleep ; 
all vices discourage it 184 

APPENDIX A 
Swedenborg as a witness 199 

APPENDIX B 
Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin in the spirit world . 204 



TO MY READERS 

In the year 1896 I gave to the public a mono- 
graph in which I endeavored to expose and un- 
settle, if not dispel, some popular delusions — as I 
regarded them — about sleep. Of these is the no- 
tion that sleep is merely a state of rest, of practi- 
cal inertia of soul and body, or, at most, a periodi- 
cal provision for the reparation of physical waste 
in the sense that a well, exhausted during the 
day, fills up in the hours of the night. I also 
tried to give some reasons for my conviction that 
no part of our lives is consecrated to nobler or 
more important uses than that usually spent in 
sleep, or contributes more — if so much — to dif- 
ferentiate us from the beasts that perish. I also 
assigned what I regarded as substantial reasons 
for believing that we are developed psychically or 
spiritually during our sleeping hours as distinctly 
and exclusively as we are developed physically 
and intellectually during our waking hours ; and 
that it is, therefore, as much the part of wisdom to 
so order our lives as to avoid everything apt to 
interfere with or impair the quality or quantity of 
our sleep, as in our waking hours it is to respect 

ix 



To My Readers 

the laws of life essential to the growth, health, 
and perfection of our bodies. 

Since that monograph appeared I have devoted 
no inconsiderable portion of my thoughts and 
time in trying either to further confirm or correct 
these views, and especially to divine, as far as is 
possible, the purposes of our Creator in requir- 
ing one-third of our lives to be spent in a state of 
absolute unconsciousness, as in death. The re- 
sults of such study and meditation have not only 
strengthened my convictions that the supposed 
exemption from customary toils and activities 
was not the final purpose of sleep, but have also 
made clearer to my mind the conviction that no 
part of a man's life deserves to be considered more 
indispensable to its symmetrical and perfect spir- 
itual development than the whiles he is separated 
from the phenomenal world in sleep. 

I have also been profoundly impressed by the 
abundant evidence that many of the events which 
occur in the waking hours of our life are gov- 
erned by the same laws and are instituted to 
serve, in a degree, the same recondite spiritual 
purposes as sleep. This has opened what has 
seemed to me not only a very f interesting but 
vastly important field of speculation. I have 
thought we might find in lunacy, in idiocy, as 
indeed in most of the chagrins, discomforts, and 
infirmities to which all are more or less exposed 
while in the flesh, an explanation and a use, on 
the lines of thought, which conduct to w T hat seems 

x 



To My Readers 

to be a satisfactory explanation of the divine 
economy of sleep ; and that all of them, like sleep, 
are providential interventions to relax the too 
strong hold which the natural world may have 
been securing upon our affections. 

Adequately to present the results of these studies, 
and to illume the enlarged horizon which they 
have revealed, has rendered it necessary to re- 
write and to so greatly expand the work of 1896 
as practically to make a new book of it. I vent- 
ure to hope that my readers will find in its con- 
tents a proportionate increase of interest and im- 
portance. 

I should be sorry to incur the suspicion of having 
sought to penetrate mysteries which are meant 
to be impenetrable, but I believe that the great 
Creator's works cease to be mysteries when their 
revelation will not expose them to profanation; 
nor do I doubt that the mysteries of sleep — like 
the mysteries of godliness, of charity, of the domes- 
tic affections — will be revealed to us just so fast 
and so far as we prepare ourselves to receive 
them and carry their lessons into our daily lives. 
Were they studied with like incentives and by the 
same class of minds as the mysteries of natural 
science are now studied, the one would proba- 
bly seem to us no more mysterious than the other, 
though the results might prove far more sur- 
prising. 

It scarcely requires prophetic vision to foresee 
the time when the art or science of sleeping will 

xi 



To My Readers 

be studied as systematically as the physiology 
of our nutritive and nervous systems, and then 
much of the literature and pseudo-science now 
in vogue, relating to both, will find their way 
into the wallet "wherein Time puts alms for 
Oblivion." 

For the convenience of my readers I will here 
briefly recapitulate the several propositions which 
I have tried in the following pages to commend 
to their serious consideration. 

I. It is not consistent with any rational notion 
of a divine Providence that we should pass one- 
third of our lives under conditions in which we 
could experience no spiritual growth or develop- 
ment, as would be the inevitable result of absolute 
rest. 

II. Sleep does not represent or imply rest in 
the sense of inactivity or idleness, psychical or 
physical. 

III. The suspension of our consciousness during 
sleep simply interrupts our relations temporarily 
with the phenomenal world and shelters us from 
its distractions and fascinations, without which 
spiritual growth and development — the divine 
purpose of our creation — would be impossible. 

IV. Neither the physical nor psychical changes 
which we are conscious of having undergone 
during the hours devoted to sleep can be realized 
or accounted for if the activity of those faculties, 
respectively, were suspended. 

V. The involuntary subjugation of the senses 

xii 



To My Readers 

periodical^ to sleep is one of the vital processes 
of spiritual regeneration, without which such re- 
generation would be impossible — as is evidenced 
by the fact that the most important events in 
the history of our race were initiated during 
sleep. 

VI. The spiritual influence and vital importance 
of sleep is further demonstrated by the conse- 
quences of its privation. 

VII. All virtues favor sleep and all vices dis- 
courage it. 

VIII. The difference between sleep and death 
may be more a difference in duration than con- 
dition. In sleep do we not die daily? Do we not 
come for a time into the same presences and under 
the same influences as when we finally quit our 
earthly body? 

IX. Should we not regard every wish thwarted, 
scheme frustrated, project brought to naught, as 
a Sabbath of rest, like sleep, to remind us that 
we are not sufficient unto ourselves, and provi- 
dentially designed " to withdraw man from his 
purpose, to hide pride from man, and to keep back 
his soul from the pit "? Is it not thus that we are 
taught to regard all our disappointments in life as 
manifestations of divine love and contributory to 
spiritual development? 

X. Lunatics, idiots, and all persons with more 
or less unbalanced minds must be presumed to 
be in their waking hours partially sheltered from 
the undue influence of the phenomenal world 

xiii 



To My Readers 

upon them, just as the sane and whole are thus 
sheltered in their sleep, and protected from evils 
with which they may be unfitted to cope. 

XI. How these views should modify the popular 
notions of our duty towards the feeble-minded, 
the unfortunate, and unhappy. 

J- B. 



THE MYSTERY OF SLEEP 



THE MYSTERY OF SLEEP 



CHAPTER I 

Why do we spend one -third of our lives in sleep? — 
Prevalent notions fallacious. 



WHY is it that the children of men are required 
by the inexorable laws of their existence to spend, 
on an average, eight out of every twenty-four 
hours, or one-third of their entire lives, in sleep? 

Why is their consciousness periodically sus- 
pended, and so large a part of every day appar- 
ently wasted that might be devoted to the prosecu- 
tion of the duties which the Author of their being 
has imposed upon them, or in such innocent in- 
dulgences as He has qualified them to enjoy? 

Why is this apparent waste made one of the 
conditions of life, not only to those w r ho are sup- 
posed to have been created in God's image, but 
to the animal and vegetable kingdoms as well? 

These are questions which pass through the 
minds of most thoughtful people at some time in 
their lives, and, to such as have grasped the great 
and pregnant truth, that in the divine economy 
there can be no waste, they are very puzzling. 

I 



The Mystery of Sleep 

" Why try to prolong life if so many hours are 
to be spent in sleep?" asked Kant. He could 
find no better solution of the question than early 
rising and a decrease of the hours devoted to 
sleep — a theory which assumed that all time 
spent in sleep was wasted. 

Most people are content with the theory that 
we get fatigued with the labors of the day, and 
need rest for refreshment simply because we are 
fatigued, as the soil needs fertilizing to main- 
tain its productiveness. 

Even science has found no better use for sleep 
than to repair the waste of tissue ; to thus " knit 
up the raveird sleave of care"; and still main- 
tains that one hour out of three, eight hours out 
of every twenty-four, four months out of every 
year, and twenty-three years out of every three- 
score-and-ten are only a fair allowance for that 
purpose. Such, in substance, would be pretty 
uniformly the answer that would be made to 
these questions, and the theory that we rest, and 
for that purpose only, would as uniformly go 
unchallenged. Yet such an answer assumes 
many things as facts which are not facts; and 
any reasoning upon them, therefore, must be fal- 
lacious. 

When we say we sleep that we may rest, the 
question naturally arises, What rests in sleep 
that does not rest equally in our waking hours? 
What faculty of the physical or the spiritual nature 
of man is in repose during sleep? What single 

2 



What Sleep Is Not 

function or energy of the body is then absolutely 
suspended? Certainly not our hearts, which do 
not enjoy a moment's rest from the hour of our 
birth to our decease. It is always in the effort to 
send our blood laden with vital energy through 
every vein,, artery, and tissue of our bodies. The 
lungs, too, are equally restless in their endeavor 
to provide themselves with fresh air to purify this 
blood and qualify it for its appointed use. The 
process of inspiration and expiration by the aid 
of an elaborate and complex system of muscular 
contraction and expansion goes on by night and 
by day with an unrelenting vigor. The same 
is true of our stomach, our glands, our kidneys, 
and of all the other mysterious operations of our 
digestive apparatus; even our nails and our hair 
are as tireless as our heart and our lungs. The 
skin acts more energetically during sleep than at 
any other time, as the quality of the atmosphere 
in the room where we have slept, if not specially 
ventilated meantime, will testify in the morning; 
and it is in consequence of the more active per- 
spiration going on during these hours that is 
to be attributed our greater liability to chills dur- 
ing sleep than at other times. Both observation 
and experiment prove that food taken just before 
sleeping is digested and assimilated much better 
than if the man or the animal is forced to walk 
or run or take active exercise immediately after 
feeding. 

A person in good health, while sleeping, will 
3 



The Mystery of Sleep 

expel from his body, by perspiration and with- 
out resorting to any artificial means of promoting 
it, twice as much matter as in the same period 
of time while awake; and nothing is excreted 
through the skin that has not been thoroughly 
digested and deprived of every quality of use 
to the body it leaves. 

The kidneys, too, not infrequently act more 
energetically during sleep than in a waking con- 
dition. 

Young plants grow in the night-time, which 
is also their time for sleep. The same is true of 
young animals. 

Science now recognizes the fact also that every 
impression made upon the mind of the sleeper pro- 
duces a change in the volume of the brain. This 
proves that the various sensory nerves, as well 
as the spinal cord, are practically incapable of 
fatigue. The care that man and all animals 
take when desiring sleep — to shelter themselves 
from light and noise, to close the doors and drop 
the curtains, to exclude all disturbing impres- 
sions from the external world — teaches us that 
the whole nervous system — even that of our con- 
sciousness, which we are wont to speak of as 
suspended — reserves its power of action during 
sleep as completely as at any other time. Certain 
birds sleep standing on one leg. Water-birds 
while asleep have a habit of gently paddling 
with one foot, showing that a group of volun- 
tary muscles are continually active. Soldiers 

4 



What Sleep Is Not 

frequently fall asleep on horseback, and even 
on foot, during a night march; nor is it very 
uncommon for persons to answer questions in- 
telligibly without awaking or remembering the 
circumstance. Statistics have been collected 
showing that out of two hundred college stu- 
dents, forty-one per cent, of males and thirty-seven 
per cent, of females talk in their sleep. So in our 
dreams we receive impressions showing that not 
only the optic, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory 
nerves are active during sleep, but that the cor- 
responding cerebral nerve - centres are active. 
Eyes are closed, not because the faculty of open- 
ing them or seeing with them is suspended, but 
simply because we do not will to open and see 
with them, and this is just what happens with 
all of us frequently in our waking hours, as when 
we close our eyes to exclude the light, to favor 
meditation, or in prayer, and always at night to 
favor sleep. There is no visual faculty suspend- 
ed in the one case more than in the other. That 
our hearing is generally less acute during sleep 
than at other times is not the result of any sus- 
pension of the auditory functions, but, as in our 
waking hours frequently, from the lack of at- 
tention. Any unusual sound, such as would be 
likely to arrest our attention in our waking hours, 
is apt to awaken us from sleep. No one can have 
travelled much on our ocean steamers without re- 
marking the prompt effect upon the sleeping pas- 
senger of any unusual noise, though it be far less 

5 . 



The Mystery of Sleep 

considerable than the familiar noise of the ma- 
chinery. Very few will sleep through even a 
pause in the operation of the machinery. So 
a disagreeable or untimely odor or smoke will 
often awaken a sleeper as soon as it would have 
been noticed by him if awake. 

"Nature has no pause/' said Goethe, "and 
visits with a curse all inaction/' 

People whose brains are most severely exercised 
are apt to find their most congenial recreations 
in games of some kind which require a concen- 
trated activity of the mental powers, while no one 
of them finds it in mental inactivity, not even 
idiots. 

The student when he wearies of one subject 
seeks his recreation in another. He drops his 
law or his theology or his astronomy and takes 
up, mayhap, poetry or music or history. I knew 
a clever architect who diverted his mind from 
professional strain by the study of geometry, 
and always travelled with a copy of Legendre in 
his satchel. He did not want rest ; he wanted 
change. Milton went to his organ for diversion. 
Dr. Franklin's favorite recreation was chess, and 
Jefferson's his violin. Whist and other games 
of chance, so called, are popular recreations for 
professional men. 

There is a very large number of both sexes, 
unfortunately, who do little or nothing from one 
week's end to the other to fatigue mind or body, 
who yet fall asleep just as punctually and sleep 

6 



Matter and Spirit Never Tire 

quite as long as the average laboring man. This 
could not be the case if rest — cessation from vol- 
untary labor — were the only or main purpose of 
sleep. 

It is now pretty generally conceded, I believe, 
that all the constituents of a human being are 
either spiritual or material ; that what of us is 
not spiritual is material, and what is not mate- 
rial is spiritual. Fatigue, of course, cannot be 
predicated of any spiritual quality. No one will 
pretend that virtue, veracity, patience, humility, 
brotherly love, are attributes or qualities of which 
fatigue can be predicated, any more than that 
twice two are or ever could have been or become 
more or less than four. 

This, of course, is equally true of the opposite 
spiritual qualities, such as viciousness, lying, in- 
humanity, pride, selfishness, hate, etc. No man, 
after feeling benevolent for a few hours, needs 
to rest his benevolence, and for that purpose be- 
come meanly selfish during his repose — a neces- 
sary condition either of its absence or its sus- 
pension. On the other hand, if anything about 
us requires repose for reparation or restoration, 
then it must be the " soul's dark cottage " which 
the spirit inhabits — our material bodies. But 
matter has no faculty of initiating or of arresting 
motion. It is absolutely inert. If matter could 
be fatigued it could and would waste, shrink in 
bulk, and perish, if not allowed to rest and re- 
cuperate ; but no one pretends that the aggregate 

7 



The Mystery of Sleep 

of matter in the world is capable of being dimin- 
ished or increased, to whatever process it may 
be subjected by man. If matter could experience 
fatigue it might be annihilated — a result which, 
scientifically speaking, is not supposable; and if 
any particle of matter could experience fatigue 
and the need of rest, all the matter in the uni 
verse must have the like experience. How upon 
such an assumption can we explain the tireless 
energy of the countless planets, which have been 
dancing to the music of the spheres around their 
respective suns from the dawn of creation, without 
relaxing their speed in the slightest degree or 
stopping a moment for repairs in all the myriads 
of years? If any particle or fraction of our bodies 
requires rest, the planets must need it incalculably 
more. 

We shall search in vain for any law, attribute, 
or property of matter or of spirit which prescribes 
rest as an end or subjective necessity under any 
imaginable circumstances.* 

* " Throughout nature there is no example of absolute 
rest, all asserted rest being expressions of relations of bodies 
to other parts of space. Atomical motion attends all thermal 
variation ; this variation is incessant and universal. Chemi- 
cal and polar motion is unceasing; and the diurnal and 
the annual motion of the earth perpetually change the posi- 
tion of every atom of its mass. The interconnected move- 
ments of the solar system, and the motion of that system 
towards a distant constellation, together with the motion 
of binary stars and of nebulae, are evidences of continual 
transition, from which we reasonably infer a motion of 
the whole stellar world, the verification of which is prevented 

8 



No Absolute Rest in Nature 

When death comes and separates the soul from 
the body and this corruptible puts on incorruption, 
matter does not part with a single attribute or 
quality necessary to its perpetuity and integrity, 
any more than a house does when a tenant moves 
out of it; even then it does not rest, but, like the 
house, becomes as much as ever before the habita- 
tion of some other form of life. 

Yet every night of our lives sleep descends 
upon us like an armed man; prostrates us with 
barbarous indifference on beds of down or straw, 
and closes up all our communications with the 
workaday world, as in death. 

by the absence of appreciable parallax and by the limited 
period of our observation. The universe itself is relieved 
from a sullen sameness and is endowed with activity, whirl- 
ing life, and beauty, simply by virtue of the never-ending 
motion of each and every atom." 

" . . . The balance of the chemist has also overturned 
the belief so long entertained of the destructibility of matter. 
Now the conception of its diminution, or expulsion from 
existence, is as impossible as that of its increase or appear- 
ance from nothing ; and as the matrix of inherent energy, 
and representing by its never-ending motion a mechanical 
force, its augmentation, or annihilation, obliterates all idea 
of laws of force. It is, therefore, concluded that the quantity 
of matter and of inherent energy in the universe is always 
the same." — One Law in Nature, by Captain H. M. Lazelle, 
United States Army. 



CHAPTER II 

Dreams imply imperfect sleep — Jouffroy — Extraordinary 
activities of body and mind during perfect sleep — Dr- 
Hack Tuke on the exercise of thought during sleep — 
Professor Agassiz' dream — Therapeutics of sleep. 



SCIENCE is obliged to admit that in sleep neither 
the intellectual nor moral faculties are at rest all 
the time. The voluminous history of dreams, 
somnambulism, hypnotism, quasi - supernatural 
exhibitions of memory, of courage, and of moral 
susceptibility, must all be accounted for before 
the dogma of sleep can be accepted as implying 
at any moment a state of absolute rest for our 
spiritual any more than for our material natures 
— for our souls than for our bodies. 

"I have never been able to comprehend/' says, 
Jouffroy, " what people mean who say that the 
mind sleeps. It is impossible to show that in 
sleep there are moments when the mind does not 
dream. Having no recollection of these dreams 
does not prove that we have not dreamed. 

" It will not be questioned that the mind is some- 
times awake while the senses sleep. 

" The fact that the mind sometimes sleeps with 
the senses is not established. All the analogies 

TO 



The Mind Always Awake 

go to prove that the mind is always awake. Con- 
flieting facts are required to destroy this inference ; 
but all facts, on the contrary, seem to confirm 
it. To me they imply this conclusion — that the 
mind during sleep is not in a special mood or 
state, but that it goes on and develops itself abso- 
lutely as in the waking hours."* 

A rustic visiting a large city for a night or two 
finds it difficult to sleep. A person reading a 
book finds it difficult to fix his attention while 
conversation is going on around him. After 
a while the novelty of these distractions wears 
off and fails to demand or receive any atten- 
tion. Evidently the distraction in either case 
was not an affair of the senses, but purely of 
the mind. 

It is not the senses that first hear the noises 
of the street or of the salon annoyingly, and 
gradually less, and finally not at all; it is the 
attention of the mind which is occupied with or 
neglects these sensations. The same sounds only 
render the savage and the blind man more sen- 
sible of them; but, on the other hand, familiar- 
ity with the sounds renders the rustic in town 
constantly more insensible to them. 

Were the effect physical, and dependent on 
the body and not on the mind, this action would 
be contrary and logically impossible; for either 
the habit weakens the physical organ or sharpens 

* Jouffroy, Melanges Philosophiques du Sommeil. 
TT 



The Mystery of Sleep 

it. It could not yield both these results at once, 
as it does in the case we have supposed of the 
savage and the blind. 

The fact is that it neither weakens nor sharpens 
the sensibility of the organ, which receives al- 
ways the same sensations; but when these sen- 
sations interest or concern us the mind takes a 
note of and analyzes them. When they cease 
to interest or concern us the mind gets accus- 
tomed gradually to neglect them and does not 
analyze them. 

The phenomenon is purely psychical, not phys- 
ical. The noise being the same on the hun- 
dredth day of the rustic's sojourn in the city as 
the first, the difference in the effect can only be 
in the mind. Had the soul slept with the body it 
would have been equally put to sleep in both 
cases, and one would see no reason for either 
awakening rather than the other. 

These facts seem to amount to a demonstration 
that the mind does not sleep like the body, but, 
disquieted by unaccustomed sensations, it awak- 
ens, and when those sensations become familiar, 
they do not awaken it. 

There is an explanation of this difference which 
only confirms its correctness. If the mind be dis- 
quieted by unusual noises it has need of the 
senses to inform it of the cause and to relieve 
it from its inquietude. It is that which obliges 
it to awake; hence we find ourselves disquieted 
by an extraordinary noise, which would not have 

12 



The Scotch Ploughboy 

happened had not our minds been aroused by 
this noise before we awoke. 

There is but one explanation of this. The 
soul or mind which watches knows whence come 
the sensations, and does not disquiet itself nor 
awaken the sensations to report on them unless 
they are unfamiliar and involve some duty to 
be performed or evil to be avoided. The unusual 
noise of a maid sweeping the carpet in a room 
adjoining your chamber, though comparatively 
feeble, will awaken the sleeper, while the whistle 
of a railway train which may be heard for miles, 
but to which he is inured, will not disturb him. 
So a nurse will sleep through all noises which 
do not concern her patient, while he cannot turn 
in his bed, nor draw a sigh, or even exhibit an un- 
usual respiration, without attracting her attention. 

So also we may be quite sure of awakening 
at a fixed hour if on the previous evening we re- 
solve to do so ; but if we rely upon others to awaken 
us we lose the faculty. The mind is our alarm- 
clock, which, if property set, rarely deceives us. 
The senses are merely the instruments which 
obey the directions of the mind. 

The experience of the Scotch ploughboy who 
complained that he never enjoyed a night's rest 
because as soon as he put his head on his pillow 
it was time to get up again, is an experience by 
no means rare, especially among the young who 
live a good deal in the open air and indulge no 
habits to interfere with sleep. 

13 



The Mystery of Sleep 

The reader's attention will now be invited to 
some other phenomena which are inconsistent 
with the idea that sleep is a condition of absolute 
repose, and which science neither attempts to gain- 
say nor explain. 

Dreams ordinarily imply more or less imper- 
fect sleep; a partial interruption only of our rela- 
tions with external objects; the twilight or dawn 
of the phenomenal world as we are just entering 
it in the morning or just leaving it at night. 

As Robert Herrick sings: 

"Here we are all by day; by night we're hurled 
By dreams each one into a several world." 

They are to the sleeper what the shore is to 
the swimmer when, emerging from the sea, his 
feet get support from the earthly bottom. Of the 
dreams — or, rather, of the mental or spiritual oper- 
ations which we experience between this twilight 
and dawn ; — that is, while our sleep is profound — 
our memory takes no note. We are only con- 
scious of dreams which occur when the phenom- 
enal world is only partially excluded from our 
consciousness ; when we are, as it were, mounting 
the shore from the deep waters in which our souls 
have been immersed. Hence, perhaps, the con- 
fused, inconsequential, and fantastic character 
of what we can recall of most of them. The pre- 
sumption, therefore, is that what takes place 
in our profound sleep, which is not in the least 
degree adulterated by direct influences from the 

14 



All Dreaming Imperfect Sleep 

phenomenal world, is entirely free from what 
seems often so improbable and fantastic in our 
remembered dreams — which are obviously a med- 
ley of emanations from two widel} 7 different worlds 
or states of being.* 

All dreaming, as distinguished from sleep, is 
imperfect sleep; it is a condition in which the 
phenomenal world has already begun to dawn 
upon us again. Our consciousness, of course, 
returns with it, pari passu. One never remembers 
a dream without waking, nor is one conscious 
of dreaming until partially awake. Jouffroy was 
very right in affirming that our minds were ac- 
tive in sleep as at other times ; but neither facts 
nor logic will support the contention " that we 
never sleep without dreaming." 

The sleep-walker, or somnambulist, exhibits 
at times even more vitality and energy than he 
would be capable of exhibiting in a waking state. 
He not only walks, runs, rides, and does other 
things which he is accustomed to do, but with 
his eyes entirely closed he seems to have percep- 
tions supernaturally acute. He walks with con- 
fidence and safety along the roofs of houses, on 
the banks of rivers, and other perilous places, 
where nothing could have tempted him to go 

* In the citation above given from his writings Jouffroy 
confounds the impressions made in dreams, of which we 
are more or less conscious, with impressions received in 
profound sleep, of which we are rarely, if ever, conscious 
except through divine permission. 

15 



The Mystery of Sleep 

when awake. What is more marvellous, he will 
write with critical accuracy in prose and verse ; 
he will compose music ; he will choose from among 
many specimens those best adapted to the most 
delicate work, with a promptness and precision 
of which, w T hen awake, he w T ould be wholly in- 
capable. 

"That the exercise of thought — and this on a 
high level — is consistent with sleep can hardly 
be doubted,' ' says Dr. Hack Tuke, an eminent 
English authority. "Arguments are employed 
in debate which are not always illogical. We 
dreamed one night, subsequent to a lively con- 
versation with a friend on spiritualism, that we 
instituted a number of test experiments in ref- 
erence to it. The nature of these tests was re- 
tained vividly in the memory after waking. They 
were by no means wanting in ingenuity, and 
proved that the mental operations were in good 
form. 

" That the higher moral sentiments are called 
into action in some instances must be admitted 
by those who take the trouble to analyze the mo- 
tives by which they have been actuated during 
sleep. The conscience may be as loud in its 
calls and reproofs in the night as in the day. 

" The memory, freed from distraction as it some- 
times is, is so vivid as to enable the sleeper to 
recall events which had happened years before 
and which had been entirely forgotten. 

" The dreamer is free from the nervousness 
16 



High Thought in Sleep 

or lack of courage or dread of the opinion of others 
from which he may suffer during the waking 
state."* 

It deserves to be noted here that neither mes- 
merism, animal magnetism, hypnotism, nor any 
of the modern forms of super-normal or voluntary 
sleep can with propriety be attributed to what 
are commonly regarded as the chief and normal 
provocatives of sleep — fatigue and exhaustion. 

It is also to be noted that all are used to a greater 
or less extent in the treatment of disease and as 
a part of the curriculum of the most important 
medical schools in the world. 

In artificial sleep there may be exhibited the 
same evidences of languor and fatigue. Hypno- 
sis may be induced by presenting to the hypnotic 
any one idea or image either by speech or ex- 
ample, as by stimulating the organs of vision or 
of hearing or of touch, by the ticking of a watch, 
a monotonous song or lullaby, or by gently strok- 
ing the skin. In every one of these cases the 
attention of the hypnotic is concentrated to a 
single object, and gradually detached from all 
else of the phenomenal world. This is the one 
uniform characteristic, I believe, of all hypnotic, 
mesmeric, and lethargic conditions whenever, 
wherever, and however induced. 

The reader will please to bear in mind that 
absolute detachment from the phenomenal world 

* Dr. Hack Tuke, Medical Physiology of Dreams. 
17 



The Mystery of Sleep 

is the uniform condition of sleep, however pro- 
voked or incited. I hope later to further illustrate 
the enormous importance of this principle. 

If, as it is no presumption to assume, there is 
nothing of divine ordinance that goes to waste, 
there must be a purpose in this periodical and 
universal change which we call sleep, conceived 
in infinite wisdom, and of course, therefore, for 
an infinitely important purpose, and what we 
call rest is only an incident, and certainly cannot 
be that ultimate purpose. 

What, then, is that ultimate purpose? 

If we will reason from what we know, or easi- 
ly can know; if we will resist the propensity to 
confound material phenomena with mental and 
spiritual operations, and keep distinctly before 
our minds, to the best of our comprehension, the 
ends or final purpose of our birth and experiences 
in this world, need we despair of obtaining a sat- 
isfactory solution of all these problems, without 
ascribing to matter or to spirit attributes which 
neither possesses, and without any wayward or 
presumptuous interpretation of the ways of God 
to men? 

May we not be permitted to extort some further 
information about the uses and results of so many 
activities as are going on within us while in a 
state of presumed entire inactivity; some ex- 
planation of the daily and extraordinary im- 
provement in our mental, our moral, and our 
physical condition, which no amount or kind of 

18 



The Dream of Agassiz 



©' 



labor by day, when all our faculties are assumed 
to be at their best, ever yields? 

The late Professor Agassiz, in one of his scien- 
tific works, relates a very curious dream, interest- 
ing not only as a psychological fact, but as illus- 
trating the indefatigable activity of the human 
mind. I give it as it has been reported by his 
widow in her biography of her distinguished hus- 
band.* 

" He had been for two weeks striving to decipher 
the somewhat obscure impression of a fossil fish on 
the stone slab in which it was preserved. Weary and 
perplexed, he put his work aside at last, and tried to 
dismiss it from his mind. Shortly after, he waked 
one night persuaded that while asleep he had seen his 
fish with all the missing features perfectly restored. 
But when he tried to hold and make fast the image it 
escaped him. Nevertheless, he went early to the Jardin 
des Plantes, thinking that on looking anew at the im- 
pression he should see something which would put him 
on the track of his vision. In vain — the blurred record 
was as blank as ever. The next night he saw the fish 
again, but with no more satisfactory result. When 
he awoke it disappeared from his memory as before. 
Hoping that the same experience might be repeated, 
on the third night he placed a pencil and paper beside 
his bed before going to sleep. 

" Accordingly, towards morning the fish reappeared 
in his dream, confusedly at first, but at last with such 
distinctness that he had no longer any doubt as to its 

* Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles. " Cyclopoma 
Spinosum Agassiz." Vol. iv. tab. i. pp. 20, 21. 

19 



The Mystery of Sleep 

zoological characters. Still half dreaming, in perfect 
darkness, he traced these characters on the sheet of 
paper at the bedside. In the morning he was surprised 
to see in his nocturnal sketch features which he thought 
it impossible the fossil itself should reveal. He hastened 
to the Jardin des Plantes, and, with his drawing as a 
guide, succeeded in chiselling away the surface of the 
stone under which portions of the fish proved to be hid- 
den. When wholly exposed it corresponded with his 
dream and his drawing, and he succeeded in classifying 
it with ease," 



CHAPTER III 

Sleep interrupts all conscious relations with the phenom- 
enal world, and thus becomes one of the vital proc- 
esses of spiritual regeneration — Nocturnal darkness 
an ally of sleep — Our transformation in sleep — Lu- 
cretius — Bryant's ' ' Land of Dreams ' ' — Voltaire — 
Venerable Bede — Swedenborg as a seer. 



THE first and most impressive fact of universal 
experience that we note as an incident of sleep 
is our sudden and complete dissociation from 
the world in which we live; the interruption of 
all conscious relations with matters which en- 
gross our attention during our waking hours. 
No matter how much we are absorbed by private 
or public affairs, no matter how vast the worldly 
interests that seem to be depending upon every 
waking hour, with what cares we are perplexed, 
what aspirations we indulge, they can postpone 
but a few hours at most the visit of this inexorable 
master, while they cannot diminish in the slightest 
degree the lawful measure of his exactions. Sleep, 
like death, knocks at the doors of kings' palaces 
as well as poor men's cottages. It is no respecter 
of persons, and while it is levying its tribute we 
are unconscious of everything we have done in 

21 



The Mystery of Sleep 

the past and of all we were planning to do in 
the future. 

Here we have one of the universal conditions 
of sleep which is coincident and in harmony with 
one of the supreme behests of a Christian life: 
utter deliverance from the domination of the 
phenomenal world; an entire emancipation, for 
these few sleeping hours, from the cares and 
ambitions of the life into which we were born, 
and to the indulgence of which we are inclined 
by nature to surrender the service of all our vital 
energies. If it be a good thing to live above the 
world, to regard our phenomenal life as transitory, 
as designed merely or mainly to educate us for a 
more elevated existence, to serve us as a means, 
not an end, then we have in sleep, apparently, 
an ally and coadjutor — at least to the extent of 
periodically delivering us from a servile depend- 
ence upon what ought to be a good slave, but 
is always a bad master. We here recognize an 
incontestable analogy at least between the phe- 
nomena of sleep and the providential process 
by which the regeneration of the human soul is 
to be begun, and by which only such regenera- 
tion can be successfully prosecuted. The very 
existence of such an analogy is a fact of immeasu- 
rable interest and importance, for such analogies 
in the scheme of divine government are not ac- 
cidental; are not without a purpose proportioned 
to the dignity of their august origin. 

There are certain provisions of nature which 

22 



Nature's Provision for Sleep 

may be justly regarded as auxiliaries to sleep 
and universal in their operation. At uniform 
intervals in every twenty-four hours of our life 
the sun withdraws its light and covers most of 
the habitable portions of our planet with a man- 
tle of darkness. This not only invites sleep by 
withholding a stimulus which discourages it, but 
practically interrupts or modifies all forms of in- 
dustrial activity; it interferes seriously with loco- 
motion; it suspends most of the plans and occu- 
pations which engage our attention during the 
sunlit hours of the day, and emancipates us for 
a few hours of every day from the dominion of our 
natural propensities and passions, which engross 
so much of our time and thought by day. 

Nor is it only by the setting of the sun that 
we are invited daily to give pause for a few hours 
to our worldly strifes. 

In sleep all the sensorial and other functions 
dependent upon or under the government of the 
will are relaxed. To secure this relaxation, we 
seek positions, places, and all other conditions 
best calculated to shelter us from light, noise, 
and all other awakening influences. Like man, 
the lower animals at such times choose a retired 
place, assume postures which demand no voluntary 
effort and which expose them least to the external 
forces which may chance to environ them. The 
serpent coils himself up so as to expose as little 
superficial surface as possible to disturbance; 
the bird conceals his head under his wing; the 

23 



The Mystery of Sleep 

porcupine covers his eyes with his tail ; the skunk 
rolls himself into a ball; the dog covers his face 
with his paw. 

Why should the ploughman leave his plough 
in its furrow when the sun ceases to light his 
way? Can any other more satisfactory reason 
be suggested than that he may for a few hours 
be as one dead to the concerns of his farm and 
plough, and his soul for a time be freed from their 
distractions? Whatever else may be the final 
purpose of sleep, that purpose also obviously 
must be among the contributory purposes of noc- 
turnal darkness; for that is one of its inevitable 
and periodical consequences. 

The learned and pious Richard Baxter seems 
to have satisfied himself some centuries ago that 
sleep was anything but the state of repose which 
scientists usually assume it to be. In his pro- 
found Inquiry into the Nature of the Soul, he 
says: 

" The phenomenon of sleep and dreaming, which 
hath been made use of to exalt the nature of matter, 
and depress the perfection of the soul ; rightly considered 
shew the very contrary. 

" The opposition of appearances observable in this 
state (of fatigue and activity, of insensibility and life 
at the same time) cannot fail to shew us the opposite 
natures of the two constituent parts of our composition. 
If all had been a blank of thought and consciousness 
in sleep, the soul would have seemed to be of the same 
nature with the body: if there had been no difference 

24 



Changes Wrought by Sleep 

of thought and consciousness then and at other times, 
the body would have appeared to be of the same nature 
with the soul; nor could the thinking principle have 
been so distinguishable. — Who that is rational would 
choose to be without these informations of an after- 
existence? — The body no sooner sinks down in weari- 
ness and slumber, than this thing within enters fresh 
upon other scenes of action: — and this without the 
subserviency of its organs, which are then disabled 
from its functions. From which it appears, it can be 
otherwise applied to than by external objects through 
the senses, Now here is such a contrariety of natures 
obviously discoverable, that it is a wonder men could 
ever find in their hearts to ascribe them to the same 
thing." 

The marvellous changes wrought in our con- 
dition, as well morally as physically, that im- 
mediately follow a satisfactory night's rest — 
changes in no respect less marvellous than those 
which at shut of day temporarily interrupt our 
communion with the phenomenal world — require 
an explanation which the popular notion of sleep 
does not give. "The morning hour/' says a 
German proverb, "has gold in its mouth." If 
our sleep has been unimpaired by indiscreet in- 
dulgence of the appetites or passions, by unwonted 
anxieties or otherwise, we awake refreshed, with 
our strength renewed, our minds serene and clear, 
our passions calmed, our animosities soothed, 
with kindlier feelings towards our neighbors than 
at any other hour of the day. It is the hour, 

25 



The Mystery of Sleep 

too, which from time immemorial has been con- 
secrated by saint and savage to devotional ex- 
ercises. 

Was it not wisely said by the Rev. Horace Bush- 
nell that "The night is the judgment-bar of the 
day. About all the reflection there is in the world 
is due, if not directly to the night, to the habits 
prepared and fashioned by it "? 

"Every one knows," says one of the profound- 
est living interpreters of the phenomena of life,* 
"how sweet is the restoration derived from one's 
pillow in health; more wonderful even yet is that 
which we derive when sleep occurs at the crisis 
of severe disease. The nocturnal refreshment of 
the physical frame induces a similar restoration 
of the spiritual. Relaxed from the tension in 
which it is held towards the outer world while 
awake, during sleep the mind sinks into a con- 
dition comparable to that in which it lay before 
consciousness commenced; all images and shapes 
it is cognizant of by day either vanish or appear 
only as reflected pictures ; unexcited from without, 
it gathers itself up into new force, new compre- 
hension of its purpose; much that crossed the 
waking thoughts, scattered and entangled, be- 
coming thereby sifted and arranged. Hence it is 
that our waking thoughts are often our truest 

* Life': Its Nature, Varieties, and Phenomena, by Leo 
H. Grindon, Lecturer on Botany at the Royal School of 
Medicine, Manchester. Sixth American edition. J. B. 
Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1892, p. 349. 

26 



Brother of Death and Son of Night 

and finest ; and that dreams are sometimes eminent 
and wise; phenomena incompatible with the idea 
that we lie down like grass into our organic roots 
at night and are merely resuscitated as from a 
winter when we wake. Man is captured in sleep, 
not by death, but by his better nature; to-day runs 
in through a deeper day to become the parent 
of to-morrow, and to issue every morning, bright 
as the morning of life, and of life-size, from the 
peaceful womb of the cerebellum/' 

Why should our minds be so much more alert 
in the morning, and problems which puzzled 
and defied solution at night be solved without a 
struggle? Why should lessons we tried in vain 
to memorize in the evening come to us when we 
awake, with verbal accuracy? — a common expe- 
rience with school-children. So things we search 
for in vain at even-tide we will often know ex- 
actly where to look for after a night's sleep. 
It is then, too, that we feel the charms of nature 
most keenly; that we are most disposed to ex- 
tenuate the misconduct of friends and neigh- 
bors. In fact, there seems to be an extraordi- 
nary welling - up of charity in us during the 
hours consecrated to what Hesiod, the Greek 
poet, describes as the Brother of Death and Son 
of Night. 

If, on the other hand, we are suddenly aroused 
from profound sleep, we are apt for a time to have 
a dazed feeling, not knowing exactly where we 
are or the precise import of what is said to us. 

27 



The Mystery of Sleep 

We act as though suddenly brought from more 
congenial and altogether different surroundings, 
from which we have been wrested reluctantly. 
Children are apt to cry; adults to scold. We 
are made happy if permitted to close our eyes 
again and return whence we came; to the com- 
pany we had left. 

"A man must be next to a devil/' said the Rev. 
Horace Bushnell, "who wakes angry. After his 
unconscious Sabbath he begins another day, and 
every day is Monday. How beautifully thus we 
are drawn, by this kind economy of sleep, to the 
exercise of all good dispositions! The acrid and 
sour ingredients of evil, the grudges, the wounds 
of feeling, the hypochondriac suspicions, the 
black torments of misanthropy, the morose fault- 
findings, are so far tempered and sweetened by 
God's gentle discipline of sleep that we probably 
do not even conceive how demoniacally bitter 
they would be if no such kind interruptions broke 
their spell. . . . Sleep is the perfectly passive 
side of our existence, and best prepares us to the 
sense of whatever is to be got by mere receptivity/' 

Every parent is familiar with the smile that 
at times comes over a sleeping infant's face, be- 
traying as distinctly as ever when awake its ex- 
perience of pleasing emotions. The elder Pliny 
takes note of the occasional habit of infants suck- 
ing in their sleep; and also of their sometimes 
awaking suddenly with every symptom of terror 
and distress. Lucretius, in the noblest epic poem 

28 



A Night's Sleep an Unconscious Sabbath 

of the Latin tongue, speaks of race-horses, while 
sleeping, becoming suddenly bathed in perspira- 
tion, breathing heavily, and their muscles strained 
as if starting in a race; also of the hunting-dogs 
while fast asleep moving their limbs and yelping 
as if in pursuit of the deer, until, awaking, they 
are sadly disabused of their delusions : 

"Donee discussis redeant erroribus ad se."* 

Bryant concludes " The Land of Dreams/' of 



' But more, what Studies please, what most delight, 
And fill Mens thoughts, they dream them o're at Night ; 
The Lawyers plead, make Laws, the Souldiers fight ; 
The Merchants dream of storms, they hear them roar, 
And often shipwrecks leap, or swim to shore : 
I think of Natur's powers, my Mind pursues 
Her Works, and e'en in Sleep invokes a Muse : 
And other Studies too, which entertain 
Mens waking thoughts, they dream them o're again. 

1 And not in thoughtful Man alone, but Beast ! 
For often, sleeping Racers pant and sweat, 
Breath short, as if they ran their second Heat; 
As if the Barrier down, with eager pace 
They strecht, as when contending for the Race. 
And often Hounds, when Sleep hath closed their Eyes, 
They toss, and tumble, and attempt to rise : 
They open often, often snuff the Air, 
As if they presst the footsteps of the Deer; 
And sometimes wak't pursue their fancy'd prey, 
The fancj^'d Deer, that seems to run away, 
Till quite awak't, the follow'd Shapes decay. 
And softer Curs, that lie and sleep at home, 
Do often rouse, and walk about the Room, 
And bark, as if they saw some Strangers come." 

— De Rerum Natura, book iv. 
2 9 



The Mystery of Sleep 

which his sjeeping daughter Julia is the heroine, 
with these striking lines : 

" Dear maid, in thy girlhood's opening flower, 
Scarce weaned from the love of childish play! 
The tears on whose cheeks are but the shower 
That freshens the blooms of early May! 

" Thine eyes are closed, and over thy brow 

Pass thoughtful shadows and joyous gleams, 
And I know, by thy moving lips, that now 
Thy spirit strays in the Land of Dreams. 

" Light-hearted maiden, oh, heed thy feet! 

Oh, keep where that beam of Paradise falls : 
And only wander where thou mayst meet 
The blessed ones from its shining walls! 

" So shalt thou come from the Land of Dreams, 
With love and peace to this world of strife : 
And the light which over that border streams 
Shall lie on the path of thy daily life." 

Another poet of promise, Mr. Watson, has more 
recently given expression to the same thought 
in some classical lines, " To the Unknown God" : 

" When, overarched by gorgeous Night, 

I wave my trivial self away; 
When all I was to all men's sight 

Shares the erasure of the day; 
Then do I cast my cumbering load, 
Then do I gain a sense of God/' 

Voltaire tells us that in one of his dreams he 
30 



Voltaire's Dreams 

supped with M. Touron, who made the words and 
music for some verses which he sang. Voltaire in 
his dream also made some rhymes which he gives : 

" Mon cher Touron, que tu m'enchantes 
Par la douceur de tes accents. 
Que tes vers sont doux et coulants. 
Tu les fais comme tu les chantes." 

"In another dream/' he adds, "I recited the 
first canto of the ' Henriade, ' but differently from 
the text. Yesterday I dreamed that verses were 
recited at supper. Some one remarked that they 
were too clever — qu'il y avait trop d'esprit. I re- 
plied that the verses were a fete given to the soul, 
and ornaments were required for fetes. Thus I 
have in my dreams said things that I would hard- 
ly have said when awake ; I have had reflections 
in spite of myself, in which I had no part. I had 
neither will nor freedom, and yet I combined ideas 
with sagacity, and even with some genius. What 
then am I if not a machine ?'"* 

In the same paper Voltaire made this important 
statement : " Whatever theory you adopt, what- 
ever vain efforts you make to prove that your 
memory moves your brain, and that your brain 
moves your soul, you are obliged to admit that 
all your ideas come to you, in sleep, independently 
of you and in spite of you — your will has no part 

* Dictionnaire Philosophique, tit. " Somnambuler et 
Songer." 

31 



The Mystery of Sleep 

in them whatever. It is certain, then, that you 
may think seven or eight hours consecutively, with- 
out having the least desire to think, ivithout even 
being aware that you think." 

We read of a monk who had been appointed to 
write an epitaph for the tomb of the Venerable 
Bede. Being much puzzled for an adjective ap- 
plicable to Bede, he fell asleep, and in a dream, it 
is said, was supplied by an angel with the follow- 
ing lines : 

" Hacce jacent fossa 
Bedse venerabilis ossa." 

It was to this communication from the land 
of dreams it is owing that, since Bede's death, 
"venerabilis" has been uniformly treated as a 
part of his name. This is the only explanation 
ever given of its selection. 

By far the most voluminous and, after the 
Bible, the most instructive repository of facts re- 
lating to the mysteries of sleep in any literature 
will be found in the writings of Emanuel Sweden- 
borg, the most illustrious of the Swedish race, 
especially in the records which he made sub- 
sequent to the year 1747, when, as he claimed, 
his spiritual vision was opened. Of the nature 
of this illumination it will be sufficient to cite 
the following passage from a letter which he 
wrote to the King of Sweden in consequence of 
the seizure and suppression of some copies of a 
treatise he had written on Conjugial Love : 

32 



Swedenborg's Visions 

" I have already informed your Majesty, and beseech 
you to recall it to mind, that the Lord our Saviour mani- 
fested Himself to me in a sensible personal appearance ; 
that He has commanded me to write what has been 
already done, and what I have still to do : that He was 
afterwards graciously pleased tc endow me with the 
privilege of conversing with Angels and Spirits, and 
to be in fellowship with them. I have already declared 
this more than once to your Majesties in the presence 
of all the Royal Family when they were graciously 
pleased to invite me to their table with five Senators, 
and several other persons ; this was the only subject 
discoursed of during the repast. Of this I also spoke 
afterwards to several other Senators; and more openly 
to their Excellencies Count de Teffein, Count Bonde, 
and Count Hopken, who are still alive, and who were 
satisfied with the truth of it. I have declared the same 
in England, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Spain, and 
at Paris, to Kings, Princes, and other particular per- 
sons, as well as to those in this kingdom. If the com- 
mon report is believed, the Chancellor has declared, 
that what I have been reciting are untruths, although 
the very truth. To say that they cannot believe and 
give credit to such things, therein will I excuse them, 
for it is not in my power to place others in the same 
state that God has placed me, so as to be able to con- 
vince them by their own eyes and ears of the truth of 
those deeds and things I have made publicly known. 
I have no ability to capacitate them to converse with 
Angels and Spirits, neither to work miracles to dispose 
or force their understandings, to comprehend what I 
say. When my writings are read with attention and 
cool reflection (in which many things are to be met 
with as hitherto unknown), it is easy enough to con- 
3 33 



The Mystery of Sleep 

elude, that I could not come by such knowledge, but 
by a real vision, and converse with those who are in 
the Spiritual World. As a further proof, I beseech 
their Excellencies to peruse what is contained in my 
Treatise on Conjugial Love, page 314 to 316. This 
book is in the hands of Count D'Ekleblad, and Count 
de Bjelke. If any doubt shall still remain, I am ready 
to testify with the most solemn oath that can be 
offered in this matter, that I have said nothing but 
essential and real Truth, without any mixture of decep- 
tion. This knowledge is given to me from our Saviour, 
not for any particular merit of mine, but for the great 
concern of all Christians' Salvation and Happiness ; 
and as such, how can any venture to assert it as false? 
That these things may appear such as many have had 
no Conception of, and of consequence, that they can- 
not from thence credit, has nothing remarkable in it, 
for scarce any thing is known respecting them." 

In a letter to Mr. Ostinger, Swedenborg says 
further : 

" To your Interrogation, if there is occasion for any 
Signs of an Extraordinary Kind to confirm Mankind 
that I am sent from the Lord to do what I do? 1 have 
in reply to observe, that at this day no Signs or Miracles 
will be given, because they operate only to an outward 
dead belief, and do not avail so as to convince the In- 
ward State of the mind agreeable to the State of Free- 
Will given to Man by the Lord, as the proper means of 
his Regeneration. That miracles only operate to an 
Exterior Faith or Belief, may be seen from the little 
effect they had on the people in Egypt, and the Children 
of Israel in the Desert, when the Lord Jehovah descend- 

34 



Swedenborg as a Seer 



& 



ed on Mount Sinai in their presence : and from what 
effect they had on the Jewish Nation, when they saw 
all the miracles our Saviour performed before them; 
for after all, did they not crucify him at last? So if the 
Lord was to appear now in the sky, attended with Angels 
and Trumpets, it would have no other effect than it 
had then. See Luke xvi. 29, 30, 31. The Signs that 
will be given at this day, will be an Illumination of the 
mind from the flowing Graces and Knowledge of the 
Lord, together with the reception of the Truths of the 
New Church, which will form the mind to a just per- 
ception of Heavenly Truth, that will work more ef- 
fectually than any Miracles. 

" You ask me, if I have spoke with the Apostles? 
To which I reply, I have. 1 have spoken at times, dur- 
ing the space of one whole year with Paul, and partic- 
ularly of what is mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans, 
chap. iii. 28. I have moreover spoken three times with 
John ; once with Moses ; and I suppose a hundred times 
with Luther, who owned to me that, contrary to the 
advice and warning of an Angel, he had received the 
Doctrine of Salvation by Faith alone, merely by itself, 
and that with the intent that he might make an entire 
separation from Popery. But with the Angelic Order 
I have spoke and conversed for these twenty -two years 
past, and daily continue to converse with them, they 
being sent of the Lord as Associates. There was no 
occasion to mention this in my Writings ; for had I done 
it, who would have believed it? Would they not also 
have said, Do Miracles first, and then we will believe?" 

We have English translations of thirty-three 
substantial octavo volumes, consisting pretty 

35 



The Mystery of Sleep 

exclusively of what Swedenborg saw or heard in 
the spiritual world while either asleep or in a 
state of practically suspended consciousness of 
the phenomenal world. Irrespective of the theo- 
logical doctrines developed in most of these vol- 
umes, it is impossible to overrate their impor- 
tance in enlightening us in regard to what goes 
on in our states of suspended consciousness, and 
above all, its conclusiveness against any theory 
of mental or spiritual inactivity w T hile in that con- 
dition. 

That Swedenborg was as credible a witness 
of what he believed he heard and saw in the 
spiritual world as either of the prophets of the 
old dispensation or apostles of the new, no one 
familiar with his life and occupations can seriously 
doubt. For the edification of such of my readers 
as may not have the advantage of such familiarity, 
I take the liberty of referring them to some au- 
thorities, to which they will hardly hesitate to 
defer, so far at least as to recognize the extraor- 
dinary activity of Swedenborg 's psychical nature 
during the twenty-eight later years of his life, 
for the larger part of which time he claimed to be 
in pretty constant communication with the spir- 
itual world." 

The records of these revelations are so accessible 
that I will not distend this volume by any analysis 
of them. To most persons I think I shall convey 

* Appendix A. 

36 



Calvin in Hades 

a sufficiently definite general idea of them for 
my purpose in referring to them here, by setting 
forth, as I propose to do in the appendix, Sweden- 
borg's account of interviews in the spiritual world 
with Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, which I 
venture to commend to the attention of my readers.* 
In connection with Swedenborg's post-obit view 
of Calvin it may be instructive to read a few ex- 
tracts from one of the most recent biographies of 
the great solifidian theologian :f 

" While a boy at school, intensely devoted to study, 
he cared little for the pastimes in which his fellow-scholars 
indulged, he shunned society and was more disposed 
to censure the frivolities of those around him than to 
secure the solace of their companionship; severe to 
others, he was still more so to himself, and his pale 
face and attenuated frame bore witness at once to the 
rigor of his abstinence and the ardor with which he 
prosecuted his studies." 

While pursuing the study of law at Orleans 
the same writer says of him: 

"At all times, indeed, a diligent student, he seems 
at this time to have been impelled by his zeal beyond 
those bounds which a wise regard to health would im- 
pose. It was his wont, after a frugal supper, to labor 
till midnight, and in the morning when he awoke he 
would, before he arose, recall and digest what he had 
read the previous day, so as to make it thoroughly his 

* Appendix B. 

t W. Lindsay Alexander, D.D., one of the Bible revisers. 

37 



The Mystery of Sleep 

own. ' By these protracted vigils/ says Beza, ' he 
secured indeed a solid erudition and an excellent mem- 
ory; but it is probable he at the same time sowed the 
seeds of that disease which occasioned him various 
illnesses in after life and at last brought upon him pre- 
mature death.' (He died in his fifty-fourth year.)" 

While settled over a parish in Geneva, where, 
"besides preaching every day in each alternate 
week, he taught theology three times in the week, 
attended weekly meetings of his consistory, read 
the Scriptures once a week in the congregation, 
carried on an extensive correspondence upon a 
multiplicity of subjects, and was engaged re- 
peatedly in controversy with the opponents of 
his opinions," he writes to a friend: 

" I have not time to look out of my house at the blessed 
sun; and if things continue thus I shall forget what 
sort of appearance it has. When I have settled my 
usual business I have so many letters to write, so many 
questions to answer, that many a night is spent without 
any offering of sleep being brought to nature. . . . 

" The incessant and exhausting labors to which 
Calvin gave himself could not but tell on the strongest 
constitution: how much more on one so fragile as his. 
Amid many sufferings, however, and frequent attacks 
of sickness, he manfully pursued his course for twenty- 
eight years ; nor was it till his frail body, torn by many 
and painful diseases — fever, asthma, stone, and gout 
— the fruits, for the most part, of his sedentary habits 
and unceasing activity — had, as it were, fallen to pieces 
around him — that his indomitable spirit relinquished 

38 



Calvin in Hades 

the conflict. . . . After he had retired from public 
labors he lingered for some months enduring the sever- 
est agony without a murmur and cheerfully attending 
to all the duties of a private kind which his disease left 
him strength to discharge/ ' 

How different might have been the history of 
Protestantism in the world had Calvin given as 
many hours to sleep as he did to professional 
work, is a problem upon which some reflection 
would not be wasted by any of us. 



CHAPTER IV 

Most conspicuous changes wrought during sleep psy- 
chical, not physical — Seclusion from the world most per- 
fect in sleep — Why the aged sleep less than others — 
Mysterious effects of sleep upon the demands of our 
appetites — Our greater endurance while sleeping than 
when awake — The need for sleep diminishes as the 
organization of our lives becomes more complex — 
BufTon — iEsculapius — Letter of Iamblichus — Moham- 
med — Cicero's dream. 



Of the changes which distinguish our con- 
dition in the morning from our condition in the 
evening, the most conspicuous are not physical, 
but psychical. The moral side of our being seems 
for the time to have been in the ascendant. Hav- 
ing ceased for some hours to be preoccupied with 
what is purely personal, narrow, and narrowing, 
the world's hold upon our thoughts and affections 
having been temporarily broken, we seem to have 
been at liberty for a time to realize that we are a 
substantive part of the universal life; to feel the 
spirit of the ages of which we are a product; to 
look up from nature to nature's God, its author, 
and to his great world as a manifestation of Him 
rather than a product of human ingenuity and 

40 



How the World is Overcome 

pretension; all this undisturbed by the calcula- 
tions and ambitions of our day-lit life. 

It was thus "to overcome the world/' or at 
least to assist us in it, that the Mosaic law set 
apart one day in seven for our spiritual refection, 
and enjoined upon us to do no manner of work. 
It was for the like purpose we were directed, when 
we pray, to enter into our inner chamber and 
shut our door, that we be not distracted by what 
the world may think or say or be to us while we 
commune with our Father in heaven. May we 
not — do we not have a more perfect seclusion from 
the world in our sleep, to help us to such a direct, 
prolonged, and undisturbed communion than is 
possible at any other time? Is it not necessary 
for all of us, or at least for much the larger pro- 
portion of the world who otherwise might never 
seek this closer communion with God, to be sub- 
jected to the operation of a law which for a portion 
of every day reduces them to a condition in which 
nothing operates to prevent their giving their at- 
tention to the divine messengers that are contin- 
ually struggling for an opportunity to be heard? 
This idea appears to have been the happy in- 
spiration of one of our as yet unpublished poets 
in the following sonnet : 

" If thou wouldst look life's problem in the face, 
And comprehend her mystic countenance, 
Seek, in the early morn, ere yet the grace 
Of dewdrops has been withered by the sun, 

41 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Some solitary glen or truant brook, 

And scan, freed from results of yesterday, 

The ill-deciphered pages of life's book: 

And ere to-day's vicissitudes have cast 

Their shadows o'er the judgment, thou shalt see 

Thy blessings will confront thee then, and ask 

A recognizing smile. The world shall seem 

A higher fact, — the heart of man more wise, 

The very universe on larger plan, — 

The glamour of day-dawn within thine eyes."* 

The changes wrought in us while sleeping, as 
a rule, vary according to the amount of sleep we 
require, and that varies with our age. In our 
childhood we require far more sleep than at later 
periods of life, and the younger we are, the more 
we need. Infants, in whom we are able to discern 
few, if any, traces of a moral sense, sleep most 
of the time. It is during this period, before their 
rationality is developed, and before they come 
under the influence of the w T orld and its tempta- 
tions, w T hich are so necessary to our spiritual 
growth later in life — in other words, before the 
moral sense can be successfully appealed to, that 
the seed is planted by parental love, which is 
destined to grow and shelter them from those 
temptations when they shall assail. The longer 
hours which infancy requires for sleep are pro- 
portioned to their greater spiritual needs. An 
infant would perish in a few hours if allowed no 
more sleep than w r ould suffice for an adult. 

* Mrs. J. Kennedy Potter. 
42 



Needs of Sleep as Affected by Age 

Old people, whose ties to the world not already 
severed are daily weakening, spend fewer hours 
in sleep, as a rule, than the younger of any age. 

Why these discriminations of nature between 
the old, the middle-aged, and the infant? It is 
not casual, but uniform and universal. Did 
fatigue create a need for repose, why should the 
octogenarian, trembling with weakness, sleep 
least? Why should the infant, who does nothing 
to induce fatigue, and doubles its weight out of 
its overflowing abundance of life, in a few months, 
sleep many times as much as its grandparents? 
Obviously because we tend to become less active 
and more contemplative in our declining years. 
The world has been gradually losing its charm, 
its former allurements cease to distract; the mind 
feeds upon the spiritual experiences of a long 
life, less disturbed than during our earlier years 
by the temptations of the world, the flesh, and 
the devil. They therefore may be presumed to 
need less sleep or to be in a spiritual condition to 
profit less for any moral purpose by sleep than 
either the stalwart adult or the puling infant. 
In the inspired language of the poet Waller, 

" The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
Lets in the light through chinks that Time has made." 

Following this line of thought, we should pause 
to take note of the fact that one by one the several 
senses by which we hold communion with the 
visible world cease to render their wonted service 

43 



The Mystery of Sleep 

as we advance into the autumn of life. The 
eyes, to use Milton's expression, " their seeing 
have forgot/' the ears their hearing, the skin its 
sensibility, and so on. Why, except that the 
messages which it is the function of the senses 
to bring to us from the external world are be- 
coming less needful to us or more hurtful, or that 
the interruption of those messages is required 
to supplement the educational offices for which 
the hours of sleep, usual at that age, were in- 
adequate? With some the senses are dulled 
earlier than with others. May not this impair- 
ment of sensibility reflect a corresponding spirit- 
ual or moral condition? Of course, this impair- 
ment is a result, not a final cause or purpose. Of 
what is it so likely to be the result as of a divine 
purpose, similar to that we are ascribing to sleep, 
of diminishing or checking the interference of the 
phenomenal world with our spiritual growth, and 
an aid to us in overcoming the world, or, rather, 
our sense of our personal importance to the world? 

Rest implies inactivity, a suspension of effort 
and exertion, the substitution of idleness for 
lab&r. If, therefore, all our nobler faculties have 
been resting during the night, have been doing 
nothing, by the operation of what force or by 
what necromancy are we so transfigured in the 
morning? 

The effect of sleep upon the demands of our 
stomach is also mysterious. Few people take 
less than three meals daily, if they can help it, 

44 



Nature an Inexorable Creditor 

yet a man may sleep from twelve to fifteen hours 
— cases are recorded of persons sleeping much 
longer — without waking, and of course without 
taking any nourishment whatsoever. 

Wraxall, in his Memoirs, tells us that William 
Pitt, the most eminent minister of George III. 
of England, having been much disturbed by a 
variety of painful political occurrences, "drove 
out to pass the night with Dundas at Wimbledon. 
After supper the minister withdrew to his cham- 
ber, having given his servant directions to call 
him at seven on the ensuing morning. No sooner 
had Pitt retired than Dundas, conscious how much 
the minister stood in need of repose, repaired to his 
apartment, locked the door, and put the key in 
his pocket, at the same time enjoining the valet 
on no consideration to disturb his master, but 
to allow him to sleep as long as nature required. 
It is a truth that Pitt neither awoke nor called 
any person till half-past four in the afternoon 
of the following day, when Dundas, entering his 
room together with his servant, found him still 
in so deep a sleep that it became necessary to 
shake in order to awaken him. He had slept 
uninterruptedly during more than sixteen hours." 

Such long naps, we fancy, are by no means 
uncommon, but are not heard of — like the heroes 
before Agamemnon — carent quia vote sacro. 

It is reported of Lord Brougham that when 
he returned home after his brilliant and exhaust- 
ing defence of Queen Caroline he went at once to 

45 



The Mystery of Sleep 

bed, with orders not to be disturbed, however long 
he might sleep — orders which his household 
obeyed, though with astonishment deepening into 
something like terror as the young lawyer's nap 
prolonged itself for nearly eight-and-forty hours. 
His physician afterwards declared that this sleep 
had saved him from brain fever, though prob- 
ably only the marvellously recuperative powers 
which he possessed enabled him to take nature's 
remedy in one such mighty dose. 

Yet all this time the digestion and other func- 
tions of the body have been going on very much 
as they are wont during the waking hours. It 
thus appears that we require nourishment three 
or four times more frequently while awake than 
while sleeping. Yet — and here is another sur- 
prise — we usually awake in the morning without 
either hunger or faintness, one or the other of 
which always accompanies an unusually long 
fast when awake. The first and morning meal 
is ordinarily the lightest of the day among people 
who are free to consult their tastes about their 
hours for eating. How shall we explain this 
strange discrepancy in the actions of the stomach 
in the daytime and at night? It is no answer 
to say that we work in the daytime, hence waste 
and hunger; for the same necessity for frequent 
nourishment during the day is as surely experi- 
enced by a person taking little or no physical 
exercise as by the bricklayer or the wood-sawyer. 
Obviously a condition of things has been super- 

4 6 



Sleeper's Insensibility to Pain 

induced by sleep which involves not only a dis- 
continuance of intercourse with the phenomenal 
world, but a suspension of some of its sternest 
exactions. 

There is another extraordinary result of sleep 
which, so far as I know, has never been remarked 
upon, but which accredits, if it does not explain, 
some of the stories related in the Bible which 
put our faith in the divine origin of that record 
to the severest test. 

When one lays himself down upon his bed or 
couch, however tired, if awake, he rarely remains 
long in any one position. At frequent intervals 
he feels an impulse to turn over or move some 
of his limbs, or otherwise relieve himself from 
what has become an uncomfortable position. 

If he falls asleep, however, though he has the 
ground for a bed and a log or even a stone for a 
pillow, he may lie quietly for many hours with- 
out the slightest motion of any kind save that 
incident to involuntary respiration. Nor, when 
he awakes, will he experience any discomfort 
in any part of his body, not even in that which 
has sustained the most pressure — a pressure 
which while awake he would not contentedly 
have quietly endured for five minutes. 

Whence this difference? There is no change 
in the physical condition of the sleeper that will 
account for it. His body weighs no less, the 
blood circulates as freely in the veins, and when 
he awakes, as a rule, he not only may have no 

47 



The Mystery of Sleep 

sense of pain or discomfort anywhere, but, on the 
contrary, feel refreshed at every point. What 
has occasioned this mysterious change in the 
relations of causes and effects on a sleeping from 
those operations on a waking man? 

We are told that Jacob, the son of Isaac and 
grandson of Abraham, on his journey towards 
Padan Aram in quest of a wife, "lighted upon a 
certain place and tarried there all night, because 
the sun was set/' (We are not told that he was 
even tired.) "And he took one of the stones 
of the place and put it under his head and lay 
down in that place to sleep." In his sleep the 
young man had dreams of an inconceivably glo- 
rious future. When he awoke he exclaimed: 
"Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it 
not; this is none other than the house of God 
and the gate of heaven." He rose, took the stone 
that he had put under his head and set it up for 
a pillar and poured oil upon it. And he called 
the name of that place Bethel. 

What change did sleep work in Jacob during 
that night, with a stone for his pillow, that he 
should set that stone up for a monument and 
pour oil upon the top of it and finally make of it 
the dwelling-place of his God? 

The reason assigned in the sacred record is 
that during his sleep he " beheld a ladder set upon 
the earth and the top of it reached to heaven, 
and he beheld angels, the messengers from God, 
ascending and descending on it, and the Lord 

4 8 



Jacob's Pillow 

standing above it, who, besides promising that 
Jacob's seed should be as the dust of the earth 
for multitude, and that in his seed should all 
the families of the earth be blessed, added, " Be- 
hold I am with thee and will keep thee whither- 
soever thou goest, and will bring thee again unto 
this land; for I will not leave thee until I have 
done that which I have spoken to thee of." 

No one will pretend that a communication of 
such incalculable importance would ever be made 
by any one, least of all by the God of gods, to 
one whose mind was, like his body, in a deep 
sleep. Is it not equally clear that the peculiar 
time for making it was selected because in his 
waking hours Jacob would not have been in a 
condition to receive it? 

Who shall say that such ladders are or have 
ever been uncommon means of communication 
between the inhabitants of the heavens and the 
earth, and that angels are not frequently ascend- 
ing and descending them with heavenly messages 
to unconscious sleepers? 

As we descend in the scale of organized life, 
the proportion of time spent in sleep seems to 
increase until we reach a point where life is ap- 
parently a continuous sleep. "An oyster," says 
Buffon, " which does not seem to have any sensi- 
ble exterior movement nor external sense, is a 
creature formed to sleep always. A vegetable 
is in this sense but an animal that sleeps, and, 
in general, the functions of every organized being 
4 49 



The Mystery of Sleep 

lacking power of movement and the senses may 
be compared to the functions of an animal who 
should be constrained by nature to sleep con- 
tinually. 

"In the animal the state of sleep is not an ac- 
cidental one, occasioned by the greater or less 
exercise of its faculties while awake ; it is, on the 
contrary, an essential mode of being, which serves 
as the base of all animal economy. Our exist- 
ence begins in sleep; the foetus sleeps almost 
continually, and the infant sleeps more hours 
than it is awake. 

"Sleep, which appears to be a purely passive 
state, a species of death, is, on the contrary, the 
first state of the living animal and the foundation 
of life. It is not a privation, an annihilation; 
it is a mode of being, a style of existence as real 
and more general than any other. We exist in 
this state before existing in any other; all or- 
ganized beings which have not the senses exist 
in this state only, while none exist in a state of 
continual movement, and all existences partici- 
pate more or less in this state of repose."" 

As we rise in the scale of organized life, on 
the other hand, we find that the time required for 
sleep diminishes, and the quality of life exhibits 
a corresponding increase of complexity, and a cor- 
responding enlargement of function, until we reach 
the highest of organizations, our own species. 

* " Discours sur la Nature des Animaux." CEnvres 
de Bujfon. Edition Flourens, vol. ii. p. 331. 

50 



Sleep only Known by its Coming and Leaving 

At the close of a laborious day we invariably, 

if in health, feel a languor which prompts us to 
take a position in which the weight of our bodies 
will be so distributed as to invite sleep — for which, 
if in health, we do not have to wait long. The 
interval between its arrival and our laying our- 
selves in a recumbent position is usually one of 
exquisite pleasure. 

All our impressions of sleep are formed before 
it arrives and after it begins to leave. We en- 
joy what we call going to sleep, and we enjoy 
the feelings we experience after we have slept, 
but during sleep we have no consciousness of 
any sensation which we have any right to at- 
tribute directly and exclusively to it, or of which 
our senses can take cognizance. While it is 
thus made pleasant for us to close our eyes and 
relax our hold upon the world for a portion of 
every twenty-four hours, we have no more right 
to infer that it is merely- that we may remain in a 
pleasing state of inactivity and insensibility than 
we have to infer that the final purpose of hunger is 
to secure us the gratifications of the palate, or the 
final purpose of sexual attraction is merely to 
gratify our sensuality. As in both these cases, 
the ends to be reached are of the most far-reaching 
character, and the desires are given that the means 
for the accomplishment of those ends should not 
be neglected, so our diurnal desire for sleep is 
manifestly designed to promote in us the growth 
and development of spiritual graces in some way, 

51 



The Mystery of Sleep 

for which the waking hours are less propitious. 
Our Maker could have had no other design in 
our creation; He can have no other design in 
the perpetuation of our race. Why should In- 
finite Wisdom have assigned a less important 
function for the very considerable portion of our 
lives during which our consciousness is suspended 
in sleep than to the function of hunger or lust? 
Why should we resist the obvious implication 
that in falling asleep we are being gradually 
separated from the world of the senses, and, as 
they seem to recede, that something flows into 
us which yields a pleasure that grows more un- 
mixed and absolute until consciousness of our 
external and natural life altogether ceases? 

" As angels in some brighter dreams 
Call to the soul when man doth sleep; 
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes 
And into glory peep." 

Pausanias, in his historic tour in Greece, de- 
scribes a temple erected in honor of iEsculapius, 
in the court of which he found the figure of Oneiros, 
the god of dreams, and beside it another of Hypnos, 
or Sleep, putting a lion to sleep. To this latter 
figure, says Pausanias, they had given the name 
of Epidotes, or the Giver. * 

"So He giveth his beloved in their sleep." 

* From the Greek word liriSiSfa/u, to increase, to fatten, to 
give freely, to give as a benevolence. 

52 



Iamblichus 

From the writings of Iamblichus, at one time 
the head of the school of Neo-Platonists, it ap- 
pears that the view here taken of sleep, as having 
a higher function than simply the reparation of 
waste, was shared some fifteen centuries ago by 
thoughtful men, who did not claim to speak by 
divine inspiration. In a letter compiled from his 
writings, and quoted by R. A. Vaughan in his 
Hours with the Mystics, he says: 

" There is nothing unworthy of belief in what you 
have been told concerning the sacred sleep and divina- 
tion by dreams. I explain it thus : 

" The soul has a twofold life, a lower and a higher. 
In sleep the soul is freed from the constraint of the body, 
and enters, as one emancipated, on its divine life of 
intelligence. Then, as the noble faculty which beholds 
the objects that truly are the objects in the world of in- 
telligence stirs within and awakens to its power, who 
can be surprised that the mind, which contains in itself 
the principles of all that happens, should, in this, the 
state of liberation, discern the future in those antece- 
dent principles which will make that future what it is 
to be? The nobler part of the soul is thus united by ab- 
straction to higher natures, and becomes a participant 
in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the gods. 

" Recorded examples of this are numerous and well 
authenticated ; instances occur, too, every day. Num- 
bers of sick, by sleeping in the temple of iEsculapius, 
have had their cure revealed to them in dreams vouch- 
safed by the god. Would not Alexander's army have 
perished but for a dream, in which Dionysius pointed 
out the means of safety? Was not the siege of Aphritis 

53 | 



The Mystery of Sleep 

raised through a dream sent by Jupiter Ammon to 
Lysander? The night-time of the body is the daytime 
of the soul." 

Tradition accounts for Mohammed's being 
among the prophets in this wise: While in- 
dulging in spiritual meditations and repeating 
pious exercises on Mount Hira in the month of 
Ramedan, the Angel Gabriel came to him by 
night, as he was sleeping, held a silken scroll be- 
fore him, and required him, though not knowing 
how to read, to recite what was written on the 
scroll. The words thus communicated remained 
graven on his memory, and ran as follows: 

" Read ! In the name of the Lord who created man 
from a drop. Read! For the Lord is the Most High, 
who hath taught by the pen to man what he knew not. 
Nay truly, man walketh in delusion when he deems 
that he suffices for himself. To thy Lord they must 
all return/ ' 

This brief announcement of the Angel Gabriel 
to Mohammed in his sleep deserves to be regarded 
as the corner-stone of the religion of the most 
numerous of the monotheistic sects in the world 
to this day — a religion which Napoleon I. char- 
acteristically pronounced superior to Christianity 
in that it conquered half the world in ten years, 
while Christianity took three hundred years to 
establish itself. 

Cicero tells us of a dream he had of a singular- 
ly prophetic character which occurred to him in 

54 



Cicero's Dream 

one of the stages of his flight after his banish- 
ment from Rome. He is certainly a good witness, 
and his dream cannot easily be reconciled with 
the popular notion of mental and moral inactivity 
during sleep. 

Being lodged in the villa of a friend, after he 
had lain restless and wakeful a great part of the 
night, he fell into a sound sleep near break of 
day, and when he waked, about eight in the morn- 
ing, told his dream to those round him : That as 
he seemed to be wandering disconsolate in a lone- 
ly place, Caius Marius, with his fasces wreathed 
with laurel, accosted him, and demanded why 
he was so melancholy; and when he answered 
that he was driven out of his country by violence, 
Marius took him by the hand, and, bidding him 
be of courage, ordered the next lictor to conduct 
him into his monument, telling him that there 
he should find safety. Upon this the company 
presently cried out that he would have a quick 
and glorious return. All of which was exactly 
fulfilled; for his restoration was decreed in a cer- 
tain temple built by Marius, and, for that reason, 
called Marius's Monument, where the Senate hap- 
pened to be assembled on that occasion. 



CHAPTER V 

The most important events in human history initiated 
during sleep — Altruism first taught in sleep — Ex- 
traordinary spiritual uses of sleep recorded in the 
Bible. 

THE most considerable and imposing repository 
of facts from which we are authorized to infer 
anything of what may be going on in us while 
we sleep may be found where, ordinarily, one 
would be least likely to look for it, and if sleep 
be, as most people suppose, simply an interruption 
of activities for the purpose of repose and refresh- 
ment, where it would be most out of place — that 
is, in the sacred Scriptures. If these writings 
are what they purport to be — an inspired guide 
to assist man in leading a holy life — it is im- 
possible to reconcile the prominence they give 
to the phenomena of sleep with the idea of its 
being merely a mode of rest from fatigue. 

Even a hasty reference to its pages will satis- 
fy the reader that sleep is rarely referred to in 
the Bible except with reference to some of the 
most vital processes of spiritual growth or de- 
generation. In reading the illustrations of this 
statement, to some of which I will now refer, the 

56 



Sleep in the Bible 

reader is requested to note the incalculably im- 
portant consequences of which, in each case, 
sleep is the prelude. 

In the Bible the very first allusion to sleep 
associates it with an event second in importance, 
perhaps, to no other in the history of our race: 

" And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon 
the Man, and he slept ; and he took one of bis ribs, and 
closed up the flesh instead thereof : and the rib, which 
the Lord God had taken from the man, made he a 
woman, and brought her unto the man. And the man 
said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my 
flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was 
taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his 
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: 
and they shall be one flesh."* 

Thus it was during his sleep that man was 
first qualified to love something outside of him- 
self, that our race received its first lesson in 
altruism; experienced its first triumph over the 
tyranny of its selfhood, and that the institution 
of matrimony was established. His Eve is man's 
first unselfish love — his first genuine charity. 

Whether regarded as literal or symbolical, the 
passage quoted is no less impressive and signif- 
icant. 

It was when the sun was going down and a 
deep sleep fell upon Abram, that the Lord made 
him the founder of nations; commissioned him 

* Genesis ii. 21. 

57 



The Mystery of Sleep 

to teach to a pagan world the unity of the God- 
head and the errors of polytheism.* 

It was when Jacob was sent to his grandfather 
to seek a wife among the daughters of his uncle 
Laban that he had the dream already referred to, 
when he beheld a ladder set up on the earth and 
reaching to heaven, on which the angels of God 
were ascending and descending, and when he 
was promised that his seed should be as the dust 
of the earth and in it all the families of the earth 
should be blessed. 

One of the most pathetic and dramatic stories 
in all literature is that of Jacob's son, Joseph, 
and his brethren, the machinery of which con- 
sists mainly of dreams. It was the recital of 
one of his dreams that provoked his brethren to 
sell him into Egypt. While in prison, in con- 
sequence of a malicious accusation of his master's 
wife, he interprets correctly the dreams of the 
king's chief butler and chief baker, who were his 
fellow-prisoners. The fame of this achievement 
spread through the land, and when Pharaoh, 
the king, was himself perplexed by a dream, he 
sent for Joseph, and was so impressed with his 
skill in interpreting it that he at once gave him 
power second only to his own in the kingdom; 
made him lord of all his house, and ruler over 
all the land of Egypt. It was thus through dreams 
that he was enabled to save his brethren "alive 

* Genesis xv. 12. 

58 



Sleep in the Bible 

by a great deliverance/' to prepare the way for 
the escape of the children of Israel from the bond- 
age of spiritual darkness in Egypt, to wander 
forty years in the wilderness, that they might 
be fitted for a home in a land flowing with milk 
and honey, and symbolize for all future time the 
several stages of man's spiritual regeneration. 

When Miriam and Aaron railed against Moses 
for marrying a Cushite woman and said, "Hath 
the Lord spoken only with Moses; hath he not 
spoken also with us?" the Lord came down in 
a pillar of cloud, called Miriam and Aaron before 
Him, and said: "If there be a prophet among 
you, I, the Lord, will make myself known unto 
him in a vision; I will speak with him in a dream. 
My servant Moses is not such; he is faithful in 
all mine house; with him will I speak, mouth to 
mouth, even manifestly and not in dark speeches ; 
and the form of the Lord shall he behold; where- 
fore then were ye not afraid to speak against my 
servant, against Moses?"* 

Samuel was laid down to sleep in the temple 
of the Lord where the ark of God was when the 
Lord called him by name. "Now Samuel did 
not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of 
the Lord yet revealed to him." The Lord called 
him three times before he knew who it was that 
called, and then only at the suggestion of the 
high-priest he answered, " Speak, for thy servant 

* Numbers xii. 2-8. 
59 



The Mystery of Sleep 

heareth. The Lord then said to Samuel, Behold 
I will do a thing in Lsrael at which both the ears 
of every one that heareth it shall tingle." x\t the 
close of the Lord's statement of what He proposed 
to do, it is recorded that "Samuel grew, and the 
Lord was with him, and did let none of his words 
fall to the ground/'" "And all Israel from Dan 
even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was estab- 
lished to be a prophet of the Lord."f 

Saul was asleep in his camp when Abishai 
said to David, whom Saul was pursuing: "God 
hath delivered up thine enemy into thine hand 
this day : now therefore let me smite him, I pray 
thee, with the spear to the earth at one stroke, 
and I will not smite him the second time." David 
replied, " The Lord forbid that I should put forth 
mine hand against the Lord's anointed." 

When Saul awoke on hearing the voice of David 
from a neighboring hill, whither he had taken 
refuge, reproaching Abner for not having kept 
better watch over the Lord's a.nointed, he said: 
"I have sinned: return, my son David: for I will 
no more do thee harm, because my life was 
precious in thine eyes this day: behold, I have 
played the fool, and have erred exceedingly. . . . 
Blessed be thou, my son David: thou shalt both 
do mightily, and shalt surely prevail."! 

To King Solomon is attributed the memorable 
127th Psalm, in which occur the following lines: 

* I Samuel iii. 19. t ■?&• iii- 20. % lb. xxvi. 21, 25. 
60 



Sleep in the Bible 

" Except the Lord build the house, 
They labor in vain that build it : 
Except the Lord keep the city, 
The watchman waketh but in vain. 
It is vain for you that ye rise up early, and so late 

take rest, 
And eat the bread of toil: 
For so he giveth unto his beloved in their sleep." 

Among the proverbs of the same king, the 
most famous of all earthly kings for his wisdom, 
" sw T eet sleep " is held forth as one of the privileges 
of him who despiseth not " the chastenings of 
the Lord" nor is "weary of his reproof/'* * 

While Daniel and his three comrades were 
living at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, " God gave 
them knowledge and skill in all learning and 
wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all 
visions and dreams/' 

When two years later Nebuchadnezzar had a 
dream which he had forgotten, he issued a decree 
for the slaughter of all his wise men and magi- 
cians, because they could not make known to 
him the dream and its interpretation. Daniel 
saved their lives and his own by revealing to the 
king "the visions of his head upon his bed/' 
and their interpretation. One of the memorable 
results of this dream was that Nebuchadnezzar 
at last confessed to Daniel that his God was the 
God of gods and the Lord of kings, and he made 

* Proverbs iii. II. 

61 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Daniel himself to rule over the whole province 
of Babylon and to be chief governor over all the 
wise men of Babylon." 

Nebuchadnezzar in due time had another dream, 
which Daniel was called upon to interpret. It 
was of painful import. The king was to be driven 
from men ; his dwelling was to be with the beasts 
of the field; he was to be made to eat grass as 
oxen and to be wet with the dew of heaven, and 
seven times were to pass over him until he should 
know "the Most High ruleth in the kingdom 
of men and giveth it to whomsoever he will." 
"At the end of the days/' said Nebuchadnezzar 
in his official proclamation of this experience, 
"I lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and ... at 
the same time mine understanding returned unto 
me ; and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty 
and brightness returned unto me; . . . and I 
was established in my kingdom, and excellent 
greatness was added unto me. Now I Nebuchad- 
nezzar praise and extol and honor the King of 
heaven; for all his works are truth, and his ways 
judgment: and those that walk in pride he is 
able to abase." f 

The prophet Joel, speaking in the name of 
the Lord God, gives us very distinctly to under- 
stand that it is in the visions of the night that 
God pours out his spirit upon us : " It shall come 
to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit 

* Daniel ii. 47. t H>. iv. 5. 

62 



Sleep in the Bible 

upon all flesh ; and your sons and your daughters 
shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, 
your young men shall see visions : and also upon 
the servants and upon the handmaids in those 
days will I pour out my spirit."* 

The angel of God spake unto Jacob in a dream, 
saying : " Lift up now thine eyes, and see that all 
the rams which leap upon the cattle are speckled, 
ringstreaked, and grizzled: for I have seen all 
that Laban doeth unto thee/' "Now arise, get 
thee out from this land, and return unto the land 
of thy kindred." 

Thereupon Jacob, with Rachel his wife, and 
Leah, stole away with their children, their cattle, 
and their goods, unawares to Laban the Syrian. 
The third day after Jacob's flight Laban first 
heard of it, and after a seven days' journey over- 
took him in the Mount Gilead. 

Meantime, God came to Laban the Syrian in 
a dream by night, and said unto him, " Take heed 
that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad." 
When Laban met Jacob he chided him for going 
away secretly, and said: "It is in the power 
of my hand to do you hurt : but the God of your 
father spake unto me yesternight, saying, Take 
thou heed that thou speak not to Jacob, either 
good or bad." 

It was then and after these three communica- 
tions from on high that the covenant between 

* Joel ii. 28. 
63 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Laban and Jacob was entered into at Mispah 
and they separated in peace. 

When Gideon's faith in the Lord's promise 
to aid him in a war against the Midianites had 
been miraculously confirmed, we are told that 
"it came to pass the same night that the Lord 
said unto him, Take thy father's bullock, even 
the second bullock of seven years old, and throw 
down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and 
cut down the Asherah goddess that is by it, and 
build an altar unto the Lord thy God upon the 
top of this stronghold, in the orderly manner, 
and take the second bullock and offer a burnt 
offering with the wood of the Asherah which 
thou shaft cut down." 

The same night the Lord directed Gideon to go 
with his servants and visit the camp of the Midian- 
ites, "and when Gideon was come behold there 
was a man that told a dream unto his fellow and 
said, Behold I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake 
of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian 
and came unto the tent and smote it that it fell, 
and turned it upside down that the tent lay along. 
And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing 
else save the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, 
a man of Israel ; into his hand God hath delivered 
Midian and all the host." 

And the same night Gideon and his hundred men 
attacked the Midianites and put them to flight. 

It will be observed that each of the three miracu- 
lous processes by which the enemies of the true 

6 4 



Sleep in the Bible 

Church were overcome and dispersed were all 
performed in the night; and one of them — ap- 
parently the most important — was the result of 
a dream. 

When Elijah was a refugee from the persecu- 
tions of Jezebel, and, faint with hunger, had 
fallen asleep under a juniper-tree, an angel touched 
him and told him to "arise and eat."* "He 
arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the 
strength of that meat forty days and forty nights 
unto Horeb, the mount of God." 

We read in Job that : 

" By reason of the multitude of oppressions they cry 
out; 
They cry for help by reason of the arm of the mighty. 
But none saith, Where is God my Maker, 
Who giveth songs in the night; 

Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, 
And maketh us wiser than the fowls of the air?" 

" I will bless the Lord, who hath given me coun- 
sel/' says the Royal Psalmist; "my reins also 
instruct me in the night seasons." f 

"Thou hast proved my heart; thou hast visited 
me in the night; thou hast tried me and findest 
nothing; I am purposed that my mouth shall 
not transgress." { 

"Where there is no vision/' said Solomon, 
"the people cast off restraint." § 

* I Kings xix. 5. f Psalm xvi. 7. 

% Psalm xvii. 3. § Proverbs xxix. 18. 

65 



The Mystery of Sleep 

"For the Lord will command his loving kind- 
ness in the daytime, and in the night his song 
shall be ivith me."* 

The exclusive use of the hours usually con- 
secrated to sleep to herald the birth of our Saviour 
is so remarkable that it is impossible for an en- 
lightened Christian to read the story as reported 
by Matthew without feeling that as He was herald- 
ed to his parents and the wise men of the East 
who were sent to search for Him, He is heralded 
to all of us in the visions of the night " when God 
pours out his spirit upon all flesh." 

His birth was foretold by an angel of the Lord 
who appeared unto Joseph in a dream, saying, 
" Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto 
thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived 
in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring 
forth a Son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus; 
for it is he that shall save his people from their 
siris."f 

The same event was announced by an angel 
directly to Mary, though not in her sleep, and 
that she was to be the mother of our Saviour. 
The Magnificat which she pronounced when she 
visited Elizabeth, immediately after the concep- 
tion, shows how conscious she was of the "day 
star" that had risen in her heart. Joseph, on 
the other hand, was minded to put her away 
privily because he had no comprehension of the 

* Psalm xlii. 8. t Matthew i. 20. 

66 



Sleep in the Bible 

significance and import of this new birth. An 
angel, therefore, was sent to him in his sleep "to 
tell him not to fear to take Mary for his wife," 
and so Joseph arose from his sleep and did as 
the angel of the Lord commanded him. 

Mary was spiritually prepared for this new 
birth. Joseph was not. He judged as the world 
judged; as the Apostles were judged by their 
hearers, and as Paul was judged by Festus. He 
had to be taught in his sleep what he might never 
have received while awake and under worldly 
influences. The world may be presumed to have 
had no such hold, then, upon Mary. 

The wise men who were sent by Herod to Bethle- 
hem to search out carefully the young child Jesus, 
and, when found, report the place to him, were 
warned in a dream that they should not return 
to Herod, so they departed into their own country 
another way. 

When they were departed, an angel of the Lord 
appeared to Joseph again in a dream, saying : 
" Arise and take the young child and his mother 
and flee into Egypt." 

After the death of Herod an angel of the Lord 
appeared once more in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, 
saying: "Arise and take the young child and 
his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for 
they are dead that sought the young child's life." 
Hearing, however, that Herod's son was reigning 
over Judea, he feared to go thither, and in con- 
sequence of being warned of God in a dream, he 

6 7 



The Mystery of Sleep 

withdrew into the parts of Galilee, to a city called 
Nazareth. 

It is to be observed here that everything done 
to bring about the birth and protection of the 
infant Jesus was done in obedience to angelic 
promptings received in visions of the night; but 
no such promptings were received by Herod or 
by the magi, whose interests in the birth of Jesus, 
great as they were, were of a worldly character. 

When Jesus took with Him Peter and James 
and John and went up into the mountain to pray, 
there talked with Him two men, Moses and Elias, 
who appeared in glory. 

Peter, and they that were with him, were heavy 
with sleep, but when they were fully awake they saw 
his glory. Peter then said: 

" Master, it is good for us to be here : and let us make 
three tabernacles ; one for thee, and one for Moses, and 
one for Elijah: not knowing what he said. 

" And while he said these things, there came a cloud, 
and overshadowed them: . . . and a voice came out 
of the cloud, saying, This is my Son, my chosen : hear 
ye him. And when the voice came, Jesus was found 
alone."* 

Till then Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, in Peter's 
mind, were of equal dignity and equally entitled 
to tabernacles. After receiving the message from 
the clouds his spiritual eyes were opened to see 

* Luke ix. 33. 

68 



The Message of Pilate's Wife 

the difference between Jesus and his companions, 
and then he saw no one but Jesus. 

The last hours of our Saviour on earth were 
signalized by an incident no less pertinent to this 
inquiry and no less remarkable than any of those 
which heralded his birth. 

While Pilate was sitting on the judgment-seat 
at the trial of Jesus he received the following 
message from his wife: 

" Have thou nothing to do with that righteous man : 
for I have suffered many things this day in a dream 
because of him."* 

How interesting beyond expression it would 
be to know the tenor of this noble lady's dream 
about "that righteous man/' an outcast from 
his own people, whom she had probably never 
seen, of w T hom she could have known nothing 
except from the priests and pharisees who were 
clamoring for his life; who belonged to a race 
held in abhorrence by the Roman aristocracy, 
and about whom she had been warned of things of 
so grave a nature as to impel her to interrupt 
the deliberations of the tribunal over which her 
husband presided, to warn him to assume no re- 
sponsibility for whatever the Jew T s under their 
law T s might do with their prisoner. Of that 
woman — the last of her sex from whom any ex- 

* Matthew xxvii. 19. 

69 



The Mystery of Sleep 

pression of sympathy for Jesus in his lifetime 
emanated that has survived Him — we know not 
even the name ; nothing but the memorable mes- 
sage which she sent to her husband. 

History for more than twenty centuries has 
treated Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, as the 
ideal Roman matron, but a greater than Cornelia 
sent that message to Pilate. 

Nor does the significance of that extraordinary 
dream end here. As we pursue the story of this 
most famous and important of all judicial pro- 
ceedings, and when the Jews clamored that Barab- 
bas rather than Jesus should be pardoned, Pilate 
asks: "What then shall I do with Jesus which 
is called Christ?" they all said, "Let him be cruci- 
fied." Finding that a tumult would be the con- 
sequence of resisting any longer the passions 
of the crowd, Pilate "took water and washed his 
hands before the multitude, saying, 'I am in- 
nocent of the blood of this righteous man : see 
ye to it/" 

The character of Jesus which Pilate's wife had 
learned in her dream and communicated in her 
message, her husband not only accepts but pro- 
claims from his judgment-seat. This is the first 
time the righteousness of Jesus was ever pro- 
claimed by any officer of any government of 
Rome. 

While Peter was waiting for his dinner in Joppa 
he fell into a trance, when he dreamed the heaven 

70 



Peter's Dream in Joppa 

opened and a vessel descended wherein were all 
manner of four-footed beasts and creeping things 
of the earth and fowls of the heaven. "And 
there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter, kill and 
eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have 
never eaten anything that is common and un- 
clean. And a voice came unto him again a sec- 
ond time, What God hath cleansed, make thou 
not unclean/'" While Peter, much perplexed, 
thought on the vision, the messengers sent by 
the Lord to bring him to Cornelius, a devout man 
and one who feared God, arrived. Peter ac- 
companied them to Cornelius, who had called 
his friends together in the sight of God to hear 
from Peter all things that the Lord had com- 
manded him. 

Why was Peter put in a trance except the better 
to qualify him to receive the instructions which 
he afterwards executed, and which he could not 
have executed without such instructions? 

Cornelius was of the Italian band, not a Jew ; 
hence the lesson Peter taught him in the trance, 
which was — First, to teach, what the Jews did 
not believe as a rule, or even suspect, that God 
is no respecter of persons, but that "in every 
nation he that f eareth him and worketh righteous- 
ness is acceptable to him." Secondly, to teach 
that Jesus was ordained of God to be the Judge 
of the quick and the dead, and that "through his 

*Acts x. 9-16. 
71 



The Mystery of Sleep 

name every one that believeth on him shall re- 
ceive remission of sins/' 

As a result of these teachings we are told that 
the Holy Ghost fell upon all them that heard 
Peter, and they were amazed because that on 
the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the 
Holy Ghost, and when Peter returned to Jerusalem, 
and was called to account for what he had done 
by them of the circumcision, he explained what 
he had done and how he came to do it. There- 
upon they "held their peace and glorified God, 
saying, Then to the Gentiles also hath God grant- 
ed repentance unto life." 

No one can fail to see that the character and 
scope of these lessons were worthy of their divine 
origin and could have had no other. It is equally 
apparent that, to impress these lessons upon the 
children of men, it was necessary that Peter's 
consciousness and this - worldliness should first 
be suspended by sleep. 

The Apostle Peter was sleeping between two 
soldiers and bound with two chains, when "an 
angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shined 
in the cell: and he smote Peter on the side, and 
awoke him, saying, Rise up quickly. And his 
chains fell off from his hands." 

The most definite and explicit statement of 
what doubtless deserves to be regarded as the 
ultimate — the vital — purposes of sleep that is 

72 



Elihu's Rebuke of Job 

given in the Bible will be found in the rebuke 
administered to Job by Elihu, the youngest of 
his comforters, for presuming to question the 
justice of the trials he was enduring. 

"Surely/' said Elihu, "thou hast spoken in 
my hearing, and I have heard the voice of thy 
words, saying, I am clean, without transgression ; 
I am innocent, neither is there iniquity in me: 
behold, he findeth occasions against me, he count- 
eth me for his enemy; he putteth my feet in 
the stocks, he marketh all my paths. Behold, I 
will answer thee; in this thou art not just; for 
God is greater than man. Why dost thou strive 
against him? For he giveth not account of any of 
his matters. For God speaketh once, yea twice, 
though man regardeth it not. In a dream, in 
a vision of night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, 
in slumber ings upon the bed, THEN HE OPENETH 
THE EARS OF MEN, AND SEALETH THEIR 
INSTRUCTION, THAT HE MAY WITHDRAW MAN 
FROM HIS PURPOSE AND HIDE PRIDE FROM 
MAN; HE KEEPETH BACK HIS SOUL FROM 
THE PIT, AND HIS LIFE FROM PERISHING BY 
THE SWORD/'" 

Have we not here a plain and unequivocal state- 
ment — 

First. That the processes of spiritual growth 
and development are not only not interrupted, 
but are more than ordinarily active during sleep. 

* Job xxxiii. 8-18. 

73 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Secondly. That while in that state man is 
withdrawn from his own purposes for much higher 
purposes than animate him during his waking 
hours. 

Thirdly. That it is while sleeping God openeth 
the ears of men and sealeth their instruction, and 
that, like the children of Israel in their journey 
through the wilderness, we are guided in the 
daytime by God's cloud, in the night by his light. 
Doth not his cloud limit our horizon even while 
revealing the path we are to take, to hide us 
from our enemies, while his light by night en- 
larges our horizon: so that we can see why, as 
well as where, w T e are to prosecute our journey? 

How could the purposes of sleep be more ex- 
plicitly stated, assuming the competence of the 
authority stating them? How could their im- 
portance be made more impressive? 

What events are recorded in the whole range 
of secular history, I will not say of graver, but 
of equal, import to any one of these I have cited, 
to which sleep is treated as a necessary incident? 

There are some who affect to make light of 
the Bible story. Conceding for a moment that 
it is a work of the imagination, a tradition, a 
myth, a literature merely why is the machinery 
of sleep so constantly introduced on occasions 
of such incomparable importance? Why were 
not these several communications, or revelations, 
made directly to the parties interested in their 
waking hours? Why were the hours of sleep 

74 



Why Angels Come at Night 

chosen when only the Divinity could know whether 
the communications were received and whether 
the effect intended was to be realized? 

Are we not compelled to suppose it was because 
a divine truth was more sure of receiving atten- 
tion; was less liable to encounter worldly ob- 
structions and distractions during the sleeping 
than during the waking hours? 

When the Master wishes to address us we may 
be sure that He will select the moment most favor- 
able to secure our attention. It is not conceivable 
that He should select any other than the most 
favorable. And if, not only in these two or three 
cases, but, I may say, so uniformly throughout 
the whole history of the Church, He selected the 
hours when our consciousness was suspended, to 
influence our will, are we not logically bound to 
presume that the suspension of our conscious- 
ness for certain hours of every day is mainly, 
if not exclusively, a part of his plan to secure 
access to our souls without interfering with the 
freedom of our wills? Is it not in those hours of 
suspended consciousness that, in his unfailing 
love and mercy, He adjusts the balance between 
the forces of good and evil which are always strug- 
gling with each other in our souls, during our 
waking hours at least, like the "two manner 
of people" in Rebekah's womb; and that, in that 
way, He defends and protects our power to choose 
between good and evil, between right and wrong, 
between righteousness and sin, without which 

75 



The Mystery of Sleep 

protection no spiritual growth would be possible? 
For it is only by his providential maintenance 
of the equilibrium between the forces of good 
and evil operating upon us in this life that we 
are enabled, through every stage of spiritual and 
moral degeneration, to retain the power to pursue 
the right and eschew the wrong. 

Every enlightened Christian understands that 
we are created and placed in the world for a pur- 
pose which contemplates an eternity of existence, 
during which we are expected to be constantly 
growing more into the image of our Creator. Is 
it reasonable or even credible to suppose that 
one-third, or indeed any minutest portion, of our 
terrestrial lives would necessarily have to be 
spent in a state or under conditions in which 
no progress whatever can be made in spiritual 
growth — in regenerate life? To entertain such 
a belief is to question the essential attributes 
of Divinity. He who grows not in his sleep, says 
an old Gaelic proverb, will not grow when awake. 

Men of science are notoriously agnostics and 
materialists, and yet they pass their lives trying 
to learn the laws of the universe, which are the 
perfect expression of divine order. The more of 
those laws we know, the more we ought to be- 
lieve in the Maker of those laws, while the effect 
upon the scientist seems to be exactly the re- 
verse. "I recognize no distinction between mat- 
ter and spirit; I know nothing but force," once 
wrote the late President Walker to me. 

7 6 



CHAPTER VI 

Spiritual influence of sleep illustrated by its privation — 
Diseases resulting — Toussaint L'Ouverture's defence 
of Hayti — Difference in sleeping habits of domestic 
and of predatory animals — Low average of longevity 
among savages explained — Habits of venomous and 
non-venomous serpents contrasted — Prominence of 
sleep in the machinery of Shakespeare's plays — Dr. 
Wilkinson — Marie Manaceine — Byron's English Bards 
and Scotch Reviewers — Alexander von Humboldt. 



THUS far we have studied the function of sleep 
from its effects, and some of its uses. Now let us 
look a little further into the effect of its privation. 

The sick in a high fever get little sleep. In 
time they are apt to become delirious. If they 
recover it is almost uniformly after an unusually 
prolonged and quiet sleep. In their fever and 
delirium their thought and speech are almost 
invariably of the world in which they live, its 
interests and concerns. Wise physicians insist 
that a patient under treatment should never be 
awakened even to take medicine. There is no 
symptom they welcome so cordially in a patient 
as a natural sleep, and no change from which 
they expect more favorable results. 

77 



The Mystery of Sleep 

The effect of being awakened from a sound 
sleep is always unpleasant. It is apt to make 
one unsocial and irritable. Any such abrupt 
recall to worldly cares induces a feeling of dis- 
content, such as usually accompanies all unwel- 
come changes of condition or unpleasant interrup- 
tions. Nor is it without significance that grown 
people pretty universally prefer to be left alone 
for some time after waking, while we rarely find 
any who have been much immersed in worldly 
cares whose friends are not content to leave them 
alone for a time after waking. 

It is the struggle we experience in exchanging 
abruptly the society we may have left in the land 
of dreams for that which we meet in the forum 
or on the exchange that has brought some stimulat- 
ing beverages, such as coffee or tea or beer, into 
such general use early in the day throughout 
the world. On waking, and before we experience 
any appetite for food, we are prone to welcome 
an exhilarant of some sort to overcome our re- 
luctance to return to the disciplinary life into 
which we were born to be trained. 

The most compact and instructive statement 
of the physical evils that follow the privation 
of sleep that has fallen under my eyes will be 
found in a work entitled Diseases of Modern Life. 
The author, Benjamin Ward Richardson, was 
for many years, and until his comparatively 
recent death, one of the leading members of the 
Royal College of Physicians in London. In the 

78 



The Pathology of Insomnia 

eighteenth chapter of this work, treating of disease 
from late hours and broken sleep, he says: 

" Although it is impossible to define in one term any 
one disease originating from irregular sleep and late 
hours of retiring to rest, there are certain impairments 
resulting from these habits which influence the course 
of the health and help materially to shorten life. . . . 

" If, in the period of his early life, a man breaks the 
rule against nature and by a strong and persistent 
effort of the will accustoms himself to short and dis- 
turbed rest, the signs of distress which the unrefreshed 
body first feels are modified, and extremely short hours 
of sleep may become the rule of life. . . . 

" In time, sleeplessness acquired by habit becomes 
a practice which, when the body has arrived at full 
maturity and more rest from sleep is absolutely de- 
manded, is not easily thrown aside. At such stage 
the bad habit tells on the life, and the physician finds 
no class of patients so difficult to treat successfully, even 
for mere functional derangements, as the habitually sleep- 
less, There is about the patient a restless anxiety, 
an irritability, and a nervous feebleness which no arti- 
ficial aid can, entirely, subdue. . . . 

" In adolescents, even if they be, naturally, of sound 
constitution and firm build, deficient sleep is a persistent 
source of mental and bodily exhaustion. It induces 
pallor, muscular debility, restlessness, and irritability. 
It interferes with that natural growth and nutrition of 
the body to which sound sleep so beneficently ministers, 
and it makes the work and the pleasure of the wakeful 
day unduly heavy and laborious. 

" These remarks apply to members of both the sexes, 
but they especially apply to girls. The anaemia, blood - 

79 



The Mystery of Sleep 

lessness, weakness, and hysterical excitability that 
characterize the young lady of modern life, who is neither 
well nor ill, are due, mainly, to her bad habit of taking 
too limited a supply of sleep at irregular hours. 

" The feebleness which falls to the lot of the robust 
who deprive themselves in youth, or who are deprived, 
of the due amount of sleep, taken in due season, is great- 
ly increased, and is of much more serious moment, when 
it falls to those who by hereditary taint are disposed 
to an acute wasting disease — to pulmonary consump- 
tion, to name the most familiar example. . . . 

" From adolescence on towards the close of that period 
of age where the body reaches the period when the ma- 
turity is attained and the downward course of life is 
not yet on hand, the strong man can resist sleep often 
for long periods. He is apt, in consequence, to trespass 
on the liberty he ventures to take with nature; and 
when from any cause he chooses to take the liberty, 
he congratulates himself, perchance, on the impunity 
with which he is able to violate the natural law. The 
delusion is not of very long duration. As the middle of 
the second stage of his career approaches the demand 
for more sleep becomes more urgent, and happy is he 
who at this crisis can recall to his service the friend 
he has deserted. 

" If in middle age the habit of taking deficient and 
irregular sleep be still maintained, every source of de- 
pression, every latent form of disease, is quickened 
and intensified. The sleepless exhaustion allies itself 
with all other processes of exhaustion, or it kills im- 
perceptibly by a rapid introduction of premature old 
age, which leads directly to premature dissolution. . . . 
" The effect of irregular hours and of deficiency of sleep 
is developed sometimes in another way. 

80 



The Pathology of Insomnia 

" When the exhaustion from prolonged sleeplessness 
is felt it is demonstrated through the heart. Inter- 
mittent action of the heart is established, and all the 
evils belonging to that broken movement are set in 
train. This state of things is most readily induced 
in those persons who, while losing their natural rest, 
are engaged in working against time. Newspaper re- 
porters and night pressmen are very quickly influenced 
in this manner, and become disabled before they are 
fully alive to their disablement. They feel at times 
a strange sensation of faintness or coldness coming 
over them, as if they were suddenly enveloped in a 
haziness or obscurity ; but, by applying more desperately 
to their work, they dash the sensation aside until it 
returns too often to be disposed of so readily. Then 
they are discovered to be suffering from exhausted 
brain and irregular circulation. 

" Another effect is sometimes witnessed, and is the 
most distressing of all. It is that the sleeplessness 
acquired by habit begets sleeplessness. The most 
extreme insomnia is herewith induced, and the mind, 
knowing no rest by night or by day, is quickly off its 
balance. The very idea that sleep will not come under 
any circumstances, unless it be enticed by powerful 
narcotics, is itself preventive of all natural repose, and 
as the dread of the sleeplessness increases other morbid 
trains of thought arise in rapid succession. Some 
hypochondriacal monomania seizes the sufferer; he 
imagines the most improbable accidents are about to 
happen to him; he is constantly restless; he bites his 
nails to the quick, or keeps up some peculiar motion 
of his limbs, a rat-tat on the table or a gesticulatory 
action of an exaggerated character. A man circum- 
6 8l 



The Mystery of Sleep 

stanced in this manner passes, usually, with steady 
advance, into insanity — too often into suicide. . . . 

" I have said that those who sleep differently and 
irregularly are more easily affected by direct causes of 
disease and are less amenable to means of cure. To 
this should be added the equally important fact that 
those who are habituated to full and regular sleep are 
those who recover most readily from sickness. The 
observation of this truth led Menander to teach that 
sleep is the natural cure of all diseases. It is so. Sleep 
reduces fever, quickens nutrition, increases elimination, 
soothes pain, and encourages the healing of wounded 
surfaces. Whoever is first to discover the still secret 
cause of natural sleep and the mode in which it may 
be commanded by art, for the service of mankind, will 
be the greatest healer who has, up to this age, helped to 
make medicine immortal." 



The length of time a man can preserve his 
mental faculties without sleep varies more or 
less with the constitution, but the inevitable re- 
sult is delirium before many days. The Chinese 
punish a certain class of flagrant crimes by con- 
stantly teasing the criminal to prevent his sleep- 
ing, and it is among the punishments regarded 
by them with most horror. Historians report 
that Perseus, the last king of ancient Macedonia, 
while a prisoner of the Romans, was " done to 
death" in this way by his guards. They would 
not permit him to sleep. 

When the first Napoleon attempted the con- 
quest of Hayti, Toussaint L'Ouverture, who had 

8>2 



Napoleon's Army in Hayti 

become commander-in-chief of the Haytians, could 
not venture a pitched battle with the battalions 
of Napoleonic veterans, but had recourse to a 
less risky though more effective method of war- 
fare. As soon as the French troops got to sleep 
at night, Toussaint made a feint of attacking 
them, thus getting them all up and under arms. 
This was repeated so frequently as effectually to 
prevent their getting any rest, and in a few weeks 
an army of thirty thousand veterans, without a 
single engagement in the field, was reduced to 
about five thousand effectives, through disease 
induced mainly, if not entirely, by want of sleep. 
It is reported that the policy of the Haytian patriot 
was prosecuted by the insurgents in Cuba in their 
late war of independence. 

Is it not obvious that something goes on during 
sleep which is a preventative of mania; some 
change is wrought that could not be wrought 
until the patient was liberated from the bond- 
age of his worldly environment, and made ac- 
cessible to influences of some kind which could 
not approach him while under such bondage, 
and that those influences are soothing, civilizing, 
harmonizing, fraternizing, elevating. 

The predatory animals, as a rule, seek their 
prey at night and their repose by day. The} 7 
differ in this respect from all tamed or domesticated 
animals. It is also to be observed that the} 7 sub- 
sist chiefly upon the food of other animals, and 
are, therefore, ever at war with the whole animal 

83 



The Mystery of Sleep 

kingdom, not always sparing their own progeny. 
Like the dangerous classes of human society, 
they take advantage of the darkness to better 
conceal their purposes, and for the greater chance 
of finding their prey asleep or off its guard. 

To domesticate or tame a wild animal, it is 
necessary to win its confidence by protecting it 
from its predatory fellows and accustoming it 
to sleep without fear. On the other hand, the 
domesticated animal soon becomes wild and 
dangerous if its sleep is disturbed; cows fall off 
in their yield of milk; hens will not lay; sheep 
will not fatten. 

Wild beasts are always lean, or, rather, never 
fat, partly, no doubt, if not entirely, because of their 
precarious livelihood, which compels them to be 
constantly on the alert by night as well as by day. 

The savage tribes, who for the most part lead 
predatory lives, are so much exposed to surprises 
that they rarely get regular or sufficient sleep, 
and take their rest as they take their food, when 
they can get it, but without periodicity or reg- 
ularity. This goes far to explain not only why 
they are savage, but why their average longevity 
is much less than that of civilized peoples. As 
they emerge from the savage state they begin to 
organize into societies for mutual protection, to 
share one another's burdens, and to secure social 
privileges, of which regular and abundant sleep 
is one to which all the others are secondary. That 
is the " pillar of fire by night " which guides them 

8 4 



The Sleep of Serpents 

from a life of barbaric selfishness towards a higher 
life of mutual forbearance and fraternity. The 
policeman's rattle is the official symbol of civiliza- 
tion, for upon the forces it rallies to the defence 
of order we depend for our undisturbed repose 
during the hours when darkness offers a partial 
immunity to crime. 

The venomous snake, which is the symbol 
of all which is most detested and detestable in 
the animal kingdom, never closes its eyes. They 
are covered with a sort of scale, transparent, like 
glass, which allows perfect vision, and yet is 
strong enough to protect the eyes from the or- 
dinary accidents of snake life. While warm- 
blooded animals shut their eyelids to exclude 
the light when they sleep and the pupils relax 
or open, in the serpent this action is reversed — 
the pupil contracts like a cat's in the sunlight. 
It is a curiously suggestive and, I believe, a well- 
authenticated fact, that the most deadly ser- 
pents, the Viperidae and Boidae, are cat-eyed 
and night-prowlers. Except when thirsty, they 
will rarely be seen moving about in the daytime. 
The Colubridae, or common, harmless snakes, 
on the other hand, have round pupils, sleep at 
night, and are active chiefly during sunlight 
hours. 

Professor W. E. Leonard, of Minneapolis, has 
given a most interesting account of the patho- 
genetic effects of w T hat is known in medical litera- 
ture as lachesis. The late Dr. Herring, of Phila- 

85 



The Mystery of Sleep 

delphia, and his brave wife are its hero and heroine. 
Lachesis is the common name of a deadly poison- 
ous serpent named by Linnaeus Trigonocephalus 
lachesis, partly from its lance-shaped head, and 
partly from one of the Greek Fates, and because 
of the swift and fatal effects of its bite. 

Herring, in his Condensed Materia Medica, 
enumerates persistent sleeplessmss among the 
pathogenetic symptoms for which lachesis is a 
specific, on the homoeopathic principle that the 
hair of the dog that bites will cure, or similia simil- 
ibas curantur. Also, " children toss about, moan- 
ing during sleep/' 

I refer to the venom of the lachesis as a remedial 
agent, because it is, I believe, a rare, if not the 
onry instance of any deadly serpent's venom 
having been tested, and its effects upon the human 
system carefully noted in minute detail, and 
classified by a professional man eminently quali- 
fied for such a task. It will be observed that 
the most conspicuous effect of this poison is 
hostility to sleep, and when sleep does intervene 
it aggravates all other symptoms, as if it and 
sleep were the deadliest and wholly unreconcilable 
enemies. It achieves its victories over its victims 
more swiftly than mere privation of sleep induced 
by most other causes is supposed to, but in both 
cases privation of sleep seems to be the one S3 r mp- 
tom without the concurrence of which none of 
the others would necessarily be fatal. 

When we reflect that the serpent in all ages 
86 



Symbolism of Serpent 

has been the symbol of what was most fatal to 
man's peace; that it was the serpent that first 
brought temptation and disobedience into the 
world; that with the Greeks the head of Medusa, 
with its snaky hair, was the symbol of the para- 
lyzing influence of vice; that Mercury's wand 
was composed of the figures of two fighting ser- 
pents, and that he himself commenced his career 
as a divinity by stealing the oxen of Apollo ; when 
we reflect that serpent-worship prevails almost 
universally among savages, who fear the power 
and cunning of serpents, and try to propitiate 
them by paying them divine honors; and more- 
over, if it be true, as there is ample warrant for 
presuming, "a reason more perfect than reason, 
and influenced by its partialities, is at work in 
us when we sleep"; if, as the pagan philosopher 
affirmed, "the night-time of the body is the day- 
time of the soul " ; if our Father which is in heaven 
"giveth his beloved in their sleep," how naturally 
and instinctively we associate the serpent's deadly 
bite, so fatal to sleep and life, with the fearful 
curse denounced against the first of the reptiles 
of whom we have any record, through whose 
subtlety, temptation and sin first came into the 
world. Hence perhaps it is that the serpent in 
the Bible symbolizes every form of temptation to 
evil or sin, and hence, only in our sleep are the 
weapons forged with which we can successfully 
contend with them. 

Shakespeare, who was no less unapproachable 



The Mystery of Sleep 

for his philosophic insight than as a poet, makes 
Caesar say: 

" Let me have men about me that are fat ; 
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights ; 
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look; 

. . . but I fear him not; 
Yet if my name were liable to fear, 
I do not know the man T should avoid 
So soon as that spare Cassius. 

Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort, 
As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit, 
That could be mov'd to smile at anything. 
Such men as he be never at heart's ease 
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves; 
And therefore are they very dangerous." 

Brutus was selected by the partisans hostile to 
Caesar to be the leader in the conspiracy against 
him, because, as Cassius expressed it : 

" He sits high in all the people's hearts : 
And that which would appear offence in us, 
His countenance, like richest alchemy, 
Will change to virtue and to worthiness." 

After calling his servant Lucius several times 
without receiving any reply — it is after midnight 
and the man is asleep — Brutus exclaims: 

" I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly." 

In the same scene Lucius is again caught nap- 
ping. Brutus calls: 

88 



Shakespeare's Notions of Sleep 

"Boy! Lucius! — Fast asleep? It is no matter; 
Enjoy the heavy honey-dew of slumber : 
Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies, 
Which busy care draws in the brains of men; 
Therefore thou sleep'st so sound." 

When Lucius is gone and leaves Brutus alone, 
he says: 

" Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar, 
I have not slept. 

Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
And the first motion, all the interim is 
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream : 
The Genius and the mortal instruments 
Are then in council; and the state of man, 
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then 
The nature of an insurrection." 

The pertinacity with which Shakespeare dwells 
upon the sleeplessness of Brutus from the time 
he began to entertain the suspicion that the liber- 
ties of Rome depended upon the immediate death 
of Caesar, is one of the marvels of this marvellous 
play. A little later in the piece, when Cassius apol- 
ogizes for entering and disturbing Brutus's rest, 
Brutus replies that he has been awake all night. 
In the same scene Portia, his wife, enters to re- 
monstrate with him: 

Brutus. Portia, what mean you . . . now? 
It is not for your health thus to commit 
Your weak condition to the raw-cold morning. 

8 9 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Portia. Nor for yours neither. You've ungently, 
Brutus, 
Stole from my bed: and yesternight, at supper, 
You suddenly arose, and walk'd about, 
Musing and sighing, with your arms across; 
And when I ask'd you what the matter was, 
You star'd upon me with ungentle looks: . 
But with an angry wafture of your hand, 
Gave sign for me to leave you: so I did; 
Fearing to strengthen that impatience 
Which seem'd too much enkindled. . . . Dear my lord, 
Make me acquainted with your cause of grief. 

Brutus. I am not well in health, and that is all. 

Portia. Brutus is wise, and, were he not in health, 
He would embrace the means to come by it. 

Brutus. Why, so I do. — Good Portia, go to bed. 

Portia. Is Brutus sick? . . . 
And will he steal out of his wholesome bed, . . . 
And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air 
To add unto his sickness? No, my Brutus; 
You have some sick offence within your mind, 
Which, by the right and virtue of my place, 
I ought to know of: and, upon my knees, 
I charm you, by my once-commended beauty, 
By all your vows of love, and that one great vow 
Which did incorporate and make us one, 
That you unfold to me, yourself, your half, 
W T hy you are heavy; and what men to-night 
Have had resort to you, — for here have been 
Some six or seven, who did hide their faces 
Even from darkness. 

I am still far from having exhausted all that 
Shakespeare has to teach us on the subject of 

90 



Shakespeares Notions of Sleep 

sleep or its privation. Whatever takes a deep 
hold upon a mind like Shakespeare's can always 
be studied with profit, and the prominence he gave 
to both in his plays warrants the belief that few 
of the phenomena of sleep or of sleeplessness 
escaped his incomparable powers of observation. 
No one familiar with his plays will often think 
of sleep as a condition of existence without being 
reminded of that thrilling soliloquy of Henry 
IV. : 

" How many thousand of my poorest subjects 
Are at this hour asleep! — Sleep, gentle Sleep, 
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, 
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, 
Nor steep my senses in forgetfulness? 
Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, 
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, 
And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, 
Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great, 
Under the canopies of costly state, 
And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody? 
thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile 
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch 
A watch case or a common 'larum bell? 
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
In cradle of the rude imperious surge, 
And in the visitation of the winds, 
Who take the ruffian billows by the top, 
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them 
With deafening clamor in the slippery shrouds, 
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes? — 

91 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Canst thou, partial Sleep, give thy repose 

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude; 

And in the calmest and most stillest night, 

With all appliances and means to boot, 

Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down! 

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." 

Queen Margaret thus brings her curse of the 
villanous Gloster to a climax: 

" No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine, 
Unless it be while some tormenting dream 
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!" 

Lady Percy says to Hotspur: 

" Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks 
And given my treasures and my rights of thee 
To thick-eyed musing and curs'd melancholy 

Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee 
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?" 

The Abbess in " The Comedy of Errors " says to 
Adriana : 

" The venom-clamors of a jealous woman 
Poison more deadly than a mad-dog's tooth. 
It seems his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing: 

In food, in sport, in life-preserving rest 

To be disturb'd, would mad or man or beast." 

With exquisite art Shakspeare makes Macbeth 
expatiate upon the blessedness of "innocent 
sleep" after his murder of Duncan, and after 

92 



Shakespeare's Notions of Sleep 

he had forfeited forever the capacity of enjoying 
it himself: 

" Methought I heard a voice cry ' Sleep no more! 
Macbeth does murder sleep ' — the innocent sleep, 
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, 
The death of- each day's life, sore labor's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
Chief nourisher in life's feast." 

Later on in the same play we read: 

" With Him above 
To ratify the work — we may again 
Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights." 

In the first scene of the second act of " The Tem- 
pest/' when Alonzo notes that several of his com- 
panions who escaped from the wreck had suddenly 
gone to sleep, he says : 

What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes 

Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts: I find 

They are inclined to do so. 

Seb. — Please you, sir, 

Do not omit the heavy offer of it: 
It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth, 
It is a comforter. 

Iago, after poisoning the jealous nature of 
Othello, says: 

" Not poppy, nor mandragora, 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
Which thou ow'dst yesterday." 

93 



The Mystery of Sleep 

The Witch, in enumerating the calamities in 
store for the Sailor in "Macbeth," says: 

" Sleep shall neither night nor day 
Hang upon his pent-house lid; 
He shall live a man forbid/' 

To fall asleep in a house of worship I fancy 
to be much less of a reproach than is common- 
ly supposed. To the devout worshipper the ten- 
dency of everything in the house of God is, or 
should be, as in sleep — to separate him from the 
world. In the degree in which our devotions are 
unmixed, undiluted with selfish, worldly, and 
personal considerations, our will is also quiescent 
as in sleep. " Rousing sermons," stirring pulpit 
oratory, may stimulate the intellect and keep 
even the devoutest people wakeful, but it does 
not follow that they make the exercises of the 
Sabbath more profitable, at least, to all. The 
most wide-awake people in church may be in a 
closer relation with the world than with their 
Creator, who, in the language of the prophet, 
may be "near in their mouth and far from their 
reins." 

It is not uncommon for those who have no habit 
or inclination to sleep during the morning hours 
of secular days, to be overcome with somnolency 
in church soon after the devotional exercises 
are begun, and who find it impossible to derive 
any edification from them until they have lost 
themselves for a moment or two in absolute un- 

94 



Sleeping in Temples 

consciousness. Then they have no difficulty, 
sometimes a lively pleasure, in attending to the 
exercises which follow. The worshipper is then 
withdrawn from the familiar excitement of cus- 
tomary avocations. It is idle to suppose that in 
these few moments of repose, upright in his pew, 
he has rested enough, in the common acceptation 
of that word, to repair any waste of tissue that 
would explain the new sense of refreshment that 
ensues. He has received, in that brief retirement 
from the world, some reinforcements which mani- 
festly are not dependent upon time or space for 
their efficacy — spiritual reinforcements, and spirit- 
ual reinforcements only. He has removed him- 
self, or been removed, further away, out of sight or 
hearing or thinking, so to speak, of his phenome- 
nal life, and nearer to the Source of all life. 

It was quite a common impression among the 
ancients that sleepers in temples of religion were 
more apt to receive divine communications there 
than elsewhere. Strabo is perhaps our most 
important pagan authority on this subject. He 
says: 

" In fact, Moses, an Egyptian priest, who possessed 
a part of the country called (Delta?), left there to go 
into Judea, having taken a disgust for the institutions 
of his country. With him parted a great number of 
men who honored the divinity. He said and taught 
that the Egyptians and the Libyans were fools to pre- 
tend to represent the divinity in the figures of ferocious 
or domestic animals; that the Greeks were no wiser 

95 



The Mystery of Sleep 

when they gave Him the human figure. According 
to him, divinity was nothing else than that which en- 
velops us — the earth and the sea — to wit, what we call 
heaven, the world, or nature. Now what sensible man 
would dare to represent this divinity by an image made 
on the model of one of us? He required them, therefore, 
to renounce all manufacture of idols, to limit their honors 
to divinity by dedicating to it a place and a sanctuary 
worthy of it without any image. It was necessary 
also that those who were subjects for happy dreams 
should come to this sanctuary to sleep, in order to ac- 
quire their inspirations for them and for others, for 
the wise and the just had always to expect from the 
divinity goods, favors, signs; but this expectation is 
interdicted to other mortals. 

" By this discourse Moses persuaded a large number 
of men of sense, and led them into the country where 
is rising to-day the city of Jerusalem." 

Pomponius Mela is another pagan writer who 
speaks of the practice in Italia-Grseca of sleeping 
in temples for the purpose of securing revelations 
by dreams. 

We have already quoted the statement of Iam- 
blichus, " that numbers of sick, by sleeping in the 
temple of iEsculapius, have had their cure revealed 
to them in dreams vouchsafed by the god." 

Samuel, while a child, slept in the temple of 
the Lord where the ark of God was. It was there 
that the Lord called him by name and prepared 
him to become one of his prophets." 

* I Samuel iii. 19. 

96 



Visions of Sleepers in Temples 

Among the Hebrews the practice seems to have 
been quite common. We are told in Luke xi. 36, 
that Anna the Prophetess, who had been a widow 
fourscore - and - four years, "departed not from 
the temple, worshipping with fastings and sup- 
plications night and day." 

Solomon went to Gibeon to sacrifice ; " the peo- 
ple sacrificed only in high places, because there 
was no house built for the name of the Lord 
until those days." Gibeon was the great high 
place, which meant the place where there was a 
house built for the name of the Lord. It was 
while there, we are told, that the Lord appeared 
to Solomon in a dream by night; and because he 
asked the Lord to give him an understanding 
heart to judge his people that he might discern 
between good and evil, and did not ask for riches 
and long life, the Lord gave him not only for 
what he asked, but riches and honor as well, 
"so that there should be no kings like him in 
all his days," and a contingent promise to lengthen 
his days. 

So in Hosea it is said: 

" The Lord hath also a controversy with Judah, 
and will punish Jacob according to his ways ; according 
to his doings will he recompense him.' In the womb 
he took his brother by the heel; and in his manhood 
he had power with God: yea, he had power over the 
angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication 
unto him: he found him at Beth-el, and there he spake 
with us; even the Lord, the God of hosts." 
7 97 



The Mystery of Sleep 

It does not seem to have occurred to any of 
these authorities that this greater accessibility to 
spiritual influence might have been due only to 
the more complete abstraction from the world 
which such a retreat encourages. 

Dean Swift, in a letter to Pope, August 30, 
1 7 16, says : " I know it was anciently the custom 
to sleep in temples for those who would consult the 
oracles. ' Who dictates to me slumbering/ " etc.* 

I am indebted to Dr. Carl Abel, a learned German 
philologist, for a clipping from the Berlin Woche, 
one of the most prominent of German illustrated 
weeklies, which he accompanies with the follow- 
ing remarks: 

" It [the clipping] actually alleges the continuance 
to this day in a Roman Catholic village near Vienna 
of the ancient Jewish practice of sleeping in hallowed 
precincts with a view to being favored with inspired 
dreams. At Jerusalem it was the temple that promised 
inspiration; at Vienna, or, rather, at Salmannsdorf, 
it is a sacred wood. In the ancient dispensation the 
communication expected was to enable the recipient 
to discern the tendency of the divine will in a matter 
of serious import. At present the oracle sought after 
seems generally to refer to the choice of lottery tickets." 

The following is a translation of the clipping 
from the Woche, August 2, 1902: 

" HOLY FOREST. — A quite unusual picture may be 
seen within five minutes' distance of the great city of 

* Milton. 
98 



Visions of Sleepers in Temples 

Vienna, in the forest of Salmannsdorf. The trees at 
the entrance of the forest are hung with oil paintings and 
engravings, etchings, bronzes, marbles, etc. — a real art- 
gallery created by religious people, among which con- 
noisseurs will recognize many valuable pieces, suffering 
from exposure to the weather. This place, about which 
there are many stories current, is considered holy and 
is called ' Forest Prayer.' Crowds of the superstitious 
sleep there in the hope of dreaming the lucky numbers 
to be played for in the Austrian lotteries." 

To this it is pleasant to add some wise observa- 
tions of a Russian lady who has recently pub- 
lished a work of substantial value on the pathology 
of sleep : 

" All the complicated conditions of social existence to 
which during waking life we are all obliged to conform 
or to resist, are eliminated during sleep and the psychic 
life of dreams unrolls freely without the impeding fet- 
ters of social laws. It cannot be denied that these social 
laws, which surround every human existence, some- 
times become a heavy burden, and that they develop 
at the same time a certain hypocrisy in feeling and 
thought and action, and thus give rise to endless false- 
hood and deceit. In sleep all this changes. We are 
delivered from the heavy burden imposed by those vital 
conditions which by virtue of historical development 
have gained a certain empire in a given nation or society, 
but which are very often at the same time not merely 
opposed to the desires and impulses of men, but even 
injurious to the development and well-being of individuals 
who live in the midst of the nation or society. From 
all these conventional chains we are liberated during 

LcfC. " 



The Mystery of Sleep 

sleep and brought, as it were, face to face with nature. 
During sleep — as the philosophic physiologist, Burdach, 
remarked — all social differences disappear ; and men 
attain that perfect equality which in the waking state 
thej^ can only dream of."* 

Lord Byron told George Ticknor that he wrote 
the English Bards and Scotch Revieivers at his 
paternal estate in the country the winter before 
he set forth on his travels, while a heavy fall 
of snow was on the ground, and he kept house for 
a month, during which time he never saw the 
light of day, rising in the evening after dark and 
going to bed in the morning before dawn. 

What better, what other explanation could be 
given of the tone, spirit, and purpose of this bru- 
tal satire than this systematic and persistent vio- 
lation of the laws of nature for a whole month, 
during which time noxious stimulants were to a 
large extent a substitute for wholesome sleep? 

The medical profession throughout the world 
has generally accepted Hufeland's division of a 
day of time as incontestably the most rational 
— that is: eight hours for work, eight hours for 
sleep, eight hours for nourishment, corporal exer- 
cise, and recreation. 

Humboldt, of delicate health in his youth, like 
Napoleon and Leibnitz, is reported to have allowed 
himself but three hours' sleep in every twenty- 

* Sleep 5 Its Physiology, Pathology, Hygiene, and Psy- 
chology. By Marie Manaceine, p. 1 12. 
100 



Humboldt 

four, and thai, despite the enormous activity of 
his mind, he attained a very advanced age. Lest 
one should attach undue importance to such 
an eminent example, I will quote one or two ex- 
tracts which deserve, I think, to be carefully 
weighed in the balance against Humboldt's prac- 
tice, if that practice is correctly reported. 

Schmettau, in his Life of Frederick William 
the Fourth, says, in speaking of LIumboldt's 
Cosmos, 

" in which, without any thought of the Creator, he 
faithfully describes nature and everything which man 
has been able to prize there, regardless of the Bible, 
which only exalts the acts of the Creator without oc- 
cupying itself with the achievements of men. The 
man who, in combining the results of an existence of 
eighteen lustres has only succeeded in blaseing him- 
self with his own self-sufficiency and in proudly leaving 
God on one side, living without thought of Him, cannot 
yet have penetrated to the sources of wisdom the fruit 
of which is peace to the soul. The influence which 
Humboldt has exerted on his age will probably profit 
no one except the powers which wish to destroy that 
peace.' ' 

G. Menzel, in his History of Modern Times, 
speaking of the Cosmos, says : 

" It was in express conflict with the Bible as the Book 
of Books. In his expose of the totality of nature there 
is no veneration nor mention of the Creator. Nature 
appears there as an indifferent substance which only 
acquires importance as it is recognized and employed 

101 



The Mystery of Sleep 

by man. Humboldt takes no account of the Creator 
and the essence of things, only of the man who dis- 
covers, explains, and invents. He only exalts the 
human intellect as an explorer, and works entirely 
in the sense of the Hegelian philosophy, in which God 
exists only so far as he is the object of the thought of 
man. Under Humboldt's influence the natural sciences 
in Germany, with scarcely an exception, were turned 
against Christianity." 

Would Humboldt have left such a deplorable 
record among his most enlightened contempora- 
ries had he divided his day as recommended by 
Huf eland? 



CHAPTER VII 

What is meant by God's resting on the seventh day 
of creation and enjoining the observance of the Sab- 
bath as a day of rest for his people. 



THE faithful student of the Bible may ask, 
How can one reconcile this theory of sleep with 
the second of the commandments delivered to 
Moses, in which we are told that on the expiration 
of the six days in which God created the heavens 
and the earth, He rested the seventh day? If God 
rested, why should not man rest? 

This question might be best answered, per- 
haps, by another. How can a being of infinite 
power be conceived of experiencing fatigue, or 
needing rest in the sense implied in this ques- 
tion? Such a notion of God is not only incon- 
sistent with the necessary and indisputable attri- 
butes of the Supreme Being — the Causa causans; 
but, worse than that, it imports either polytheism 
or atheism. 

It was one of the reproaches which the pagans 
made against the early Christians that they passed 
every seventh day in effeminate idleness, in imi- 
tation of their ivearied God — a reproach which 

103 



The Mystery of Sleep 

is not without point, if the God they worshipped 
was subject to fatigue. 

Claudius Rutilius Namatianus, author of an 
elegiac poem in two books, describing his trip 
from Rome to Gaul, 416 A.D., speaks of a charm- 
ing country place he visited on leaving Falerie, 
the manager in charge of which was a querulous 

Jew: 

" Namque loci querulus curam 
Judaeus agebat," — 

who scolds him for disturbing the shrubbery and 
wasting the water. 

"We rebuked him" [he says] "as his ignoble race 
deserved — a shameless people whose practice of cir- 
cumcision is the root of all absurdities of this ignoble 
race, who celebrate with all their soul their stupid Sab- 
bath, but with a soul more stupid than their religion, 
and pass in shameful idleness every seventh day in 
effeminate imitation of their wearied God."* 

Another answer to the question may be found 
in the second and third verses of the second chapter 
of Genesis, where we are told that "God finished 
his work which he had made; and he rested on 
the seventh day from all his work which he had 
made. And God blessed the seventh day and 

* " Reddimus obscenae convicia debita genti 
Quae genitale caput propudiosa metit, 
Radix stultitiae, cui frigida sabbata cordi, 

Sed cor frigidius religione sua : 
Septima quaeque dies turpi damnata veterno, 
Tanquam lassati mollis imago dei." 

IO4 



Rest of the Sabbath 

hallowed it, because that in it he rested from all 
his work which God had created and made." 

Rest in its ordinary acceptance implies ex- 
haustion of force; a feebleness which if not re- 
inforced must result in death — a condition not 
thinkable of our Creator. In the case under 
consideration it could mean nothing of that kind 
because another and very different reason was 
distinctly assigned; it was because God had dis- 
tinguished that from other days of creation by 
blessing and sanctifying it. 

In blessing and sanctifying rest, God certainly 
did not bless and sanctify idleness, an interruption 
of growth, a suspension of all productive activities, 
a temporary death. These are not qualities that 
merit or invite sanctification, any more than om- 
nipotence is susceptible of fatigue. It is clear 
that this discrimination of the Sabbath from other 
days was not to secure physical repose and re- 
cuperation, the antithesis and commonly received 
antidote to fatigue. It was, as we are assured 
by the divine record, because the people of Israel 
had been slaves in Egypt — that is, in bondage 
to sinful habits, propensities, and passions, an 
inordinate and debasing selfhood from which 
the Lord had emancipated them. The Sabbath 
was to be kept to remind them of their great de- 
liverance and of the duties and obligations which 
that deliverance imposed. It was a new provi- 
sion for the new spiritual condition to which they 
had been advanced. 

105 



The Mystery of Sleep 

If mere physical repose and functional recuper- 
ation is not meant — and such it certainly could 
not have been — we must look elsewhere for the 
true significance of a practice or ceremonial of 
which our Father in heaven set the first example 
and which He requires all his children to follow. 

Happily, Paul the Apostle has thrown some 
light upon this question, though it was not pre- 
cisely the subject of which he was treating at the 
time. In his Epistle to the Hebrews, third and 
fourth chapters, he says: 

While it is said, To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden 
not your hearts, as in the provocation. 

For some, when they had heard, did provoke : howbeit 
not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. 

But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it 
not with them that had sinned, whose carcasses fell 
in the wilderness? 

And to whom sware he that they should not enter 
into his rest, but to them that believed not? 

So we see that they could not enter in because of un- 
belief. 

Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of en- 
tering into his rest, any of you should seem to come 
short of it. 

For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto 
them: but the word preached did not profit them, not 
being mixed with faith in them that heard it. 

For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he 
said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter 
into my rest: although the works were finished from 
the foundation of the world. 
1 06 



Rest of the Sabbath 

For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day 
on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from 
all his works. 

And in this place again, If they shall enter into my 
rest. 

Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter 
therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered 
not in because of unbelief: 

Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, 
To-day, after so long a time; as it is said, To-day if 
ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. 

For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not 
afterward have spoken of another day. 

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. 

For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased 
from his own works, as God did from his. 

Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any 
man fall after the same example of unbelief.* 

Here it is distinctly stated that the generation 
which Moses led out of bondage in Egypt was 
not permitted to enter into God's rest — First, be- 
cause they do always err in their hearts ; secondly, 
because they have not known God's ways ; thirdly, 
because they had sinned; fourthly, because of 
unbelief. 

Then Paul adds that he and his followers which 
have believed do enter into rest, and that there 
remaineth a rest to the people of God " for he that 
is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from 
his own works as God did from his." 

* Paul to the Hebrews iii. 14. 
IO7 



The Mystery of Sleep 

When Paul here speaks of himself and his 
followers entering into rest he says that "they 
ceased from their own works/' not as a plough- 
man does at shut of day, but "as God did from 
his." Paul was never more active, never more 
zealous in the calling wherewith he was called, 
than at that period of his life when he was inditing 
these lines in commendation of the rest into which 
he and his followers had entered. 

When we regard — as enlightened theologians 
usually do — the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt, 
referred to in Paul's exposition, as a bondage to 
sin, and their deliverance from it as the beginning 
of the process of regeneration, we then begin to 
comprehend the necessity for the prosecution of 
the work of regeneration represented by the forty 
y T ears' struggle with trials and temptations in 
the wilderness, and for a periodical withdrawal 
from worldly cares and from exposure to worldly 
temptations, and for the consecration of a portion 
of our time and thoughts to the entire exclusion 
of those distractions. 

The Lord, in excusing Himself for what He had 
done to and for the children of Israel in leading 
them out of Egypt and giving them his statutes 
and judgments, " which if a man do he shall live 
by them," added: 

" Moreover, also, I gave them my Sabbath to be a 
sign between me and them that they might know that 
I am the Lord that sanctify them." 
1 08 



Rest of the Sabbath 

Sanctification, not idleness, was the great and 
the exclusive purpose of the Sabbath and its rest. 
Is not sanctification the purpose of all rest, and 
is not all rest a detachment from the world, which 
is only complete in sleep and in death? 

Again, in the twenty-eighth verse of the fortieth 
chapter of the same prophet, he says : 

" The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the 
ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary. There 
is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power 
to the faint, and to him that hath no might he increaseth 
strength." 

In the fifteenth verse of the thirtieth chapter 
of Isaiah, the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, 
is reported as saying : 

" In returning and rest shall ye be saved ; in quietness 
and in confidence shall be your strength : and ye would 
not." 

The most compact definition of the rest which 
the Sabbath was intended to secure perhaps is 
given in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, the 
spirit of which will be found in the following verses : 

" If thou turn away thy foot from doing thy pleasure 
on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the 
holy of Jehovah honorable; and shaft honor him, not 
doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, 
nor speaking thine own words : then shalt thou be de- 
lightful to Jehovah the Lord, and I will cause thee to 
ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee 
with the heritage of Jacob." 
109 



The Mystery of Sleep 

And here we are confronted by a serious and 
pregnant inquiry. Is not every incident of our 
lives which detaches our affections from this 
world or diminishes the value of all selfish pleas- 
ures in our eyes part of that rest which the Sab- 
bath was intended to secure us? 

Nothing happens by chance. Nothing is ac- 
cidental. Neither can we conceive of any waste 
of divine energy. Everything that occurs we 
must presume is working the purposes of divine 
love and wisdom. What, then, is the sanctifying 
purpose of the innumerable interruptions, dis- 
appointments, and defeats of which the earthly 
lives of the wisest and best, as well as the weakest 
and basest, experience? What is the compensa- 
tion we are to expect for our ever-recurring hun- 
ger and fatigue, for the pains, the illnesses, disas- 
ters in business, involuntary idleness, unwelcome 
and inconvenient claims upon our time, and un- 
profitable distractions which we can neither avoid 
nor enjoy? What else but what our Father in 
heaven meant when He said of the Israelites to 
the prophet: 

" Moreover I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign 
between me and them, that they might know that I 
am the Lord; that I sanctify them/'" 

What are they but sabbaths designed to weaken 
or break the hold of the world upon us; to impair 

* Ezekiel xx. 12. 
110 



The Allies of Sleep 

our natural confidence in our self-sufficiency; 
to give us his rest from labors that are too en- 
grossing and which prevent our knowing the 
Lord who is sanctif5 7 ing it? All trials and tribula- 
tions are messengers from heaven sent in love 
and mercy. All of them, from the least unto the 
greatest, tend to weaken this world's hold upon 
us. Do they not all, then, perform, in a degree 
and more or less frequently, what is manifestly 
the one great function of sleep? 

The Lord has assured us that He is always 
knocking at every one's door and waiting to be 
asked to come in and sup with him. What are 
any of our tribulations but his knocks at our 
door; his sabbaths that He wishes to sanctify to 
us? We are prostrated by disease, with alarming 
uncertainties as to its final result. How rapidly 
all our worldly interests sink in value as those 
uncertainties increase; how soon all our worldly 
ambitions pass from our thoughts like a vision 
of the night; how readily would we exchange 
all our wealth or honors for the robust health of 
the coal-heaver or the hod-carrier. The world's 
pomps and vanities shrink under trials only less 
than in sleep, when they entirely disappear for 
a season; or in death, when they disappear al- 
together. 

May it not be fairly questioned whether the 
perusal of a fine poem or romance, or the con- 
templation of a masterpiece of art of any kind, 
has ever a loftier mission than to release us for 

in 



The Mystery of Sleep 

a time from this thraldom of our daily cares; 
to supply us with new and captivating ideals, and 
make us realize our capacity for the enjoyment 
of higher modes of existence and nobler pleasures? 
In other words, are they not handmaidens of sleep? 
But more on this subject presently. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Prominence given to the morning hour in the Bible, 
and its spiritual significance. 



I HAVE already referred to the great changes, 
physical, mental, and moral, which we appear to 
undergo during the intervals of sleep. 

" A man," says Dr. Bushnell, "must be next to 
a devil who wakes angry. After his unconscious 
Sabbath he begins another day, and every day 
is Monday. How beautifully thus we are drawn, 
by this kind economy of sleep, to the exercise 
of all good dispositions! The acrid and sour 
ingredients of evil, the grudges, the wounds of 
feeling, the hypochondriac suspicions, the black 
torments of misanthropy, the morose fault-find- 
ings, are so far tempered and sweetened by God's 
gentle discipline of sleep that we do not even con- 
ceive how demoniacally bitter they would be if 
no such kind interruptions broke their spell/' 

All these experiences are doubtless more or 
less familiar to everybody ; and they give a peculiar 
significance and importance to many of the most 
momentous spiritual epochs in the history of our 
race. 

8 113 



The Mystery of Sleep 

It will be a careless reader of the Bible who 
will not be struck by the frequency with which 
epochal events are there reported to have occurred 
in the morning, and, in many instances, when 
to all human appearances there could be no reason 
for naming any time at all for their occurrence, 
and still less for their occurrence at the time named. 
The reader will do well to note the extreme im- 
portance of the communication in every instance 
here cited. 

We are told that Jacob awoke out of his sleep 
and said : " Surely the Lord is in this place ; and 
I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, 
How dreadful is this place. This is none other 
than the house of God and this is the gate of 
Jwaven."* 

" The Lord said unto Moses, Rise up early in the 
morning, and stand before Pharaoh; lo, he cometh 
forth to the water; and say unto him, Thus saith the 
Lord, Let my people go."f 

It was at midnight that the Lord smote all the 
first-born in the land of Egypt, but the houses 
of the children of Israel were passed over. " There 
shall no plague be upon you to destroy you, when 
I smite the land of Egypt, and this day shall be 
unto you for a memorial and ye shall keep it a 
feast to the Lord." % 

On this fateful night it was ordered that none 

* Genesis xxviii. 16-18. t Exodus viii. 20. 

% Exodus xii. 14. 
114 



Morning Hours in the Bible 

of the Israelites were to go out of the door of his 
house until the morning* 

The same night Pharaoh rose and all his ser- 
vants and all the Egyptians, and he called up 
Moses and Aaron by night, and said : " Rise up, 
get you forth from among my people, both ye 
and the children of Israel : and go serve the Lord 
as ye have said."f So ''it came to pass at the 
end of four hundred and thirty years, even the 
self-same day it came to pass that all the hosts of 
the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. It 
is a night of watching unto the Lord for bringing 
them out of the land of Egypt : this same night is 
a night of watching unto the Lord for all the chil- 
dren of Israel throughout their generations." 

As nothing in the divine economy is accidental, 
nor anything in God's word which has not a mes- 
sage for us, we are forced to assume that it was 
not by accident that the hour of midnight was 
chosen to smite the first-born of the Egyptians 
for their obduracy; that the Israelites were for- 
bidden to leave their houses that night; and that 
Pharaoh called upon Moses and Aaron at night 
to rise up, take his people, and go and serve the 
Lord as he wished. Regarded as an ordinary 
concession from a sovereign to a refractory class 
of his subjects, the wonder is why this judgment 
upon the Egyptians and this deliverance of the 
Israelites should have been wrought in the night, 

* Exodus xii. 22. t Exodus xii. 31. 

115 



The Mystery of Sleep 

when to the natural eye there appears no reason 
why it might not have been conducted more con- 
veniently for all parties by daylight. 

When Pharaoh and his host pursued the children 
of Israel and went in after them into the midst of 
the sea, "it came to pass in the morning watch 
that the Lord looked forth upon the host of the 
Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of cloud 
and discomfited the host of the Egyptians. . . . 
And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, 
and the sea returned in its strength when the 
morning appeared. . . . And the waters returned 
and covered the chariots and the horsemen, even 
all the host of Pharaoh that went after them into 
the sea. There remained not so much as one 
of them. . . . And Israel saw the great work 
which the Lord did upon the Egyptians, and the 
people feared the Lord; and they believed in the 
Lord and in his servant Moses." 

When the children of Israel were being led out 
of their bondage to the Egyptians "The Lord 
went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to 
lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of 
fire, to give them light; to go by day and night. 

" He took not away the pillar of cloud by day, 
nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the 
people/'" 

The night was no more to be wasted than the 

* Exodus xiii. 22. 
Il6 



Morning Hours in the Bible 

day. But how was it to be improved ? Not merely 
by fleeing from Egyptians, but from their bond- 
age to sins they were leaving behind them. 

In what way, then, did they prosecute their 
journey by night? Of course they could not 
march day and night. That was physically im- 
possible. Besides, we read continually of their 
camping in different places. They camped at 
Elim ; they were a long time camped at Rephidim. 
Then they were camped before Mount Sinai, where 
they received through Moses the Commandments 
and a code of laws. There they tarried a long 
time. After many years they abode in Kadish, 
where Miriam died and was buried. Later at 
Mount Hor they mourned thirty days for Aaron, 
who died and was buried there. 

But the Lord went before them all this time. 
His work with them was not suspended by night 
any more than by day. 

Who can read these citations, thus grouped 
together, without wondering that the time when 
the events to which they refer occurred is so uni- 
formly given, when, to all appearance, it is of 
no earthly importance? The thoughtful reader 
will be forced to the conclusion that the data in 
question were either idle and superfluous or that 
the events referred to had some essential and 
inevitable relation to the particular time of their 
occurrence. 

The first theory can only be accepted by those 
who dispute the supernatural origin of the Word. 

117 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Those who accept the other theory and have read 
these verses, will have no difficulty in divining 
what, in the eyes of the writer, that essential and 
inevitable relation is. 

When the children of Israel murmured against 
Moses and Aaron and pined in the wilderness 
for the flesh-pots of Egypt, the Lord promised 
Moses to rain bread from heaven for them. 

" And Moses and Aaron said unto all the children 
of Israel, At even, then ye shall know that the Lord 
hath brought you out from the land of Egypt. 

" And in the morning, then ye shall see the glory of 
God."* 

The Israelites, we are told, subsisted for the 
next forty years of their wanderings in the wilder- 
ness upon this manna sent from heaven. They 
were instructed to gather it, every man according 
to his eating, but said Moses, " Let no man leave 
of it until the morning ." This bread sent them 
from heaven was to be eaten at night; "And in 
the morning/ ' adds Moses, " ye shall see the glory 
of God." 

The Lord's bread is the bread of life — bread 
for the soul as well as the body. 

No circumstance connected with the proclama- 
tion of the Ten Commandments can be treated 
with indifference or as of secondary importance. 
Here is the account of that event as recorded in 

* Exodus xvi. 6, 7. 
Il8 



Morning Hours in the Bible 

the twenty - fourth chapter of Exodus, and the 
reader will please note the time selected for the 
most important message perhaps that was ever 
given to our race : 

" The Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables 
of stone like unto the first : and I will write upon the 
tables the words that were on the first tables, which 
thou breakest. And be ready by the morning, and 
come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai and present 
thyself there to me on the top of the Mount. . . . And 
he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and 
Moses rose up early in the morning and went up unto 
Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and 
took in his hand two tables of stone. And the Lord 
descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and 
proclaimed the name of the Lord." 

When the Lord gave Moses the tables of stone 
and the law and the commandment that he might 
teach them, " Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, 
and rose up early in the morning, and builded an 
altar under the mount, and twelve pillars, accord- 
ing to the twelve tribes of Israel. . . . And he took 
the book of the covenant, and read in the audience 
of the people: and they said, All that the Lord 
hath spoken will we do, and be obedient ." * 

When Hannah, and Elkanah her husband, 
went to the high-priest Eli, and obtained his bless- 
ing upon their petition that she might become a 
mother, "her countenance was no more sad. And 

* Exodus xxiv. 4-7. 
119 



The Mystery of Sleep 

they rose up in the morning early, and worshipped 
before the Lord, and returned to their house to 
Ramah."* 

When the Philistines insisted that David should 
not go down with them to the battle, Achish told 
David : " I know that thou art good in my sight, 
as an angel of God; notwithstanding the princes 
of the Philistines have said, He shall not go up 
with us to the battle. Wherefore now rise up 
early in the morning with the servants of thy 
lord that are come with me: and as soon as ye 
be up early in the morning, and have light, depart. 
So David rose up early, he and his men, to de- 
part in the morning, to return into the land of the 
Philistines. t 

We are told that " David's heart smote him 
after that he had numbered the people. And 
when David rose up in the morning, the word 
of the Lord came unto the prophet Gad, Da- 
vid's seer, saying, Go and speak unto David, 
Thus saith the Lord: I offer thee three things; 
choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto 
thee." | 

When the Philistines captured the ark of God 
from the Hebrews, they brought it into the house 
of Dagon and set it by Dagon. Early the follow- 
ing morning, Dagon was fallen upon his face 
to the ground before the ark of the Lord. The 
Philistines then sat Dagon again in his place 

* I Samuel i. 19. t 1 Samuel xxix. 9. 

% 2 Samuel xxiv. 10. 

120 



Morning Hours in the Bible 

beside the ark of God, "and when they arose 
early on the morroiv morning, behold Dagon was 
fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark 
of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both the 
palms of his hands lay cut off upon the threshold, 
only the stump of Dagon was left him/'* 

In both these instances, the prostration of Dagon, 
and finally his mutilation, occurred in the night- 
time, and when the Hebrews, to whose advan- 
tage the idol's overthrow inured, were presumably 
asleep. 

One of the most important and pathetic colloquies 
with a sovereign ever reported was that which 
Samuel the Prophet had with Saul, the King of 
Israel, because of his disobedience, finally result- 
ing in Saul's downfall and the establishment of 
the dynasty of David, from which Jesus the Christ 
was begotten. 

Saul had offended the Lord " for having turned 
back from following and performing his com- 
mandments." His offence was reported in the 
night to Samuel, who rose early to meet Saul 
in the morning. 

" Saul said to him, Blessed be thou of the Lord : I 
have performed the commandment of the Lord. And 
Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the 
sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which 
I hear? And Saul said, They have brought them from 
the Amalekites : for the people spared the best of the 

* i Samuel v. 5. 
121 



The Mystery of Sleep 

sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy 
God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed. 

" Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell 
thee what the Lord hath said to me this night. And 
he said unto him, Say on. And Samuel said, Though 
thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made 
the head of the tribes of Israel? And the Lord anointed 
thee king over Israel ; and the Lord sent thee on a journey, 
and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amale- 
kites, and fight against them until they be consumed. 
Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the 
Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst that which 
was evil in the sight of the Lord? And Saul said unto 
Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and 
have gone the way which the Lord sent me, and have 
brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly 
destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the 
spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the devoted things, 
to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal. And 
Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt 
offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the 
Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and 
to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as 
the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry 
and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected the word 
of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king. 
And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned : for I have 
transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy 
words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their 
voice. Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, 
and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord. 
And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee : 
for thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the 
Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel/' 
122 



Morning Hours in the Bible 

The prophet Ezekiel tells us that "it came to 
pass in the twelfth year of captivity, that one 
that had escaped out of Jerusalem came unto me 
saying, The city is smitten. Now the hand of 
the Lord had been upon me in the evening, before 
he that was escaped came; and he had opened 
my mouth, until he came to me in the morning; 
and my mouth was opened, and I was no more 
dumb." * 

This was the beginning of the most impressive 
message ever delivered by Ezekiel. It was to show 
how and by what tribulations men who with their 
mouth show much love but their heart goeth after 
their gain, are sometimes made to know that the 
author of such messages was the Lord. 

It is important to notice that Ezekiel's mouth 
was opened, and he was no more dumb in the 
morning because the hand of the Lord had been 
upon him in the evening. 

"It is of the Lord's mercies/' says the prophet, 
"that we are not consumed, because his com- 
passions fail not. They are new every morning; 
great is thy faithfulness." f 

King David sings: 

" My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, Lord, 
in the morning will I direct my prayers unto thee and 
will keep watch." $ 

* Ezekiel xxxiv. 21. f Lamentations iii. 22, 23. 

% Psalm v. 

123 



The Mystery of Sleep 

" My soul fleeth unto the Lord before the morning 
watch; I say, before the morning watch." * 

" Thou hast proved and visited my heart in the night 
season; thou hast tried me and shalt find no weakness 
in me : for I am utterly purposed that my mouth shall 
not offend." t 

" Sing praises unto the Lord, ye saints of his, and 
give thanks to his holy name. For his anger is but 
for a moment ; In his favor is life : Weeping may tarry 
for the night, But joy cometh in the morning." J 

" As for me, let me behold thy face in righteousness : 
Let me be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." § 

John, the child of Elizabeth, was proclaimed 
by his father Zacharias as "the prophet of the 
Highest/' who was to go "before the face of the 
Lord to prepare his ways and give knowledge of 
salvation unto his people/' "whereby," he adds, 
"the Day Spring from on high hath visited us, 
to shine upon them that sit in darkness and the 
shadow of death; to guide our feet in the way 
of peace." || 

So in Job : " Hast thou commanded the morning 
since thy days began, and caused the day spring 
to know its place; that it might take hold of the 
ends of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out 
of it." f 

Why on both of these most important occasions 
is such importance given to the dawn or spring- 
time of the day? 

* Psalm cxxx. f Psalm xvii. 3. % Psalm xxx. 4, 5. 

§ Psalm xvii. 15. || Luke i. 79. 1 Job xxxviii. 12. 

124 



Morning Hours in the Bible 

Does it mean anything more to us than any 
other part of the day would have meant to us? 

It was in reference to precisely this event that 
the Angel Gabriel said to Mary, " No word from 
God vshall be void of power/'* 

The Lord Jesus was buried in the evening and 
was raised on the third day in the morning. 

It was on the first day of the week that Mary 
Magdalen came early while it was yet dark to the 
sepulchre and saw the stone had been taken away 
from the sepulchre. This led to her being the 
first to see Jesus and to receive the first communica- 
tion that was made by Him to the human race 
after his crucifixion, "f 

It was early in the morning that Jesus came 
into the temple, and all the people came to Him, 
and He sat down and taught them. J 

To the angel of the church at Pergamum — " To 
him that overcometh, to him will I give of the 
hidden manna and I will give him a white stone, 
and upon the stone a new name written which 
no one knoweth but he that receiveth it. And 
I will give him the morning star." § 

By the Morning Star, the Lord himself, of course, 
is meant. || 

* Luke i. 37. t Mark xvi. 2. % John viii. 2. § Rev. ii. 12. 

|| " I am the root and offspring of David, the bright and 
Morning Star." — Apoc. xxii. 16. 

" The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me : 
one that ruleth over men righteously, that ruleth in the fear 
of God. He shall be as the light of the morning when the 
sun riseth, a morning without clouds." — 2 Samuel xxiii. 3, 4. 

125 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Nicodemus, a man of the Pharisees and a 
ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night to 
ask how a man could be born again when he is 
old.* 

Subsequently at the Crucifixion, and when 
Joseph of Arimathea had obtained permission of 
Pilate to take away the body of Jesus, "there 
came also Nicodemus (he who at the first came 
to him by night), bringing a mixture of myrrh 
and aloes/' 

It is significant that the seemingly unimpor- 
tant fact that the first visit of Nicodemus to Je- 
sus was by night should be here recalled, when 
Nicodemus appears to assist at our Saviour's 
burial. 

When the Lord promised Solomon long life and 
riches because, instead of asking for them, he 
had asked for an understanding heart to judge 
the people and discern between good and evil, 
which prayer also was gratified, Solomon awoke, 
and behold it w r as a dream in the night."\ 

" I will praise the Lord, who hath given me counsel; 
yea, my reins instruct me in the night seasons/' | 

" Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy cometh 
in the morning/' § 

Though upon a mystery of this character the 
Word is the highest authority that can be appealed 

* John iii. 4. t J Kings iii. 15. 

t Psalm xvi. 7. § Psalm xxx. 5. 

126 



Morning Dreams 

to, yet, unless confirmed to some extent by the 
experience and judgment of men making no claim 
to supernatural inspiration, it might fail to pro- 
duce conviction even in minds professing the 
most absolute faith in revelation. 

Of such confirmation there is a great abundance, 
but here it will be necessary to refer only to three 
or four, but such as will make up in weight for 
numbers. 

Dante speaks of 

"... the hour when her sad lay begins, 
The little swallow, near unto the morning, 
Perchance in memory of her former woes, 
And when the mind of man a wanderer is 
More from the flesh and less by thought imprisoned 
Almost prophetic in its vision is." * 

This theory of morning dreams is in accord 
with, and no doubt an allusion to, what some 
call a superstition, but which would be more re- 
spectfully described as a conviction among the 
ancients that somnium post somnum efficax est 
atque eveniet sive bonum sit sive malum; a con- 
viction which Ovid perpetuated in the following 
lines : 

" Namque sub Aurora dormitante lucerna 
Somnia quo cerni tempore vera solent." f 

The truth of morning dreams, as affirmed in the 
lines above cited from Dante, was the happy in- 

* Purgatorio ix. ii. f Heroides Epist. xix. 195. 

127 



The Mystery of Sleep 

spiration of the following lines of the late T. W. 
Parsons, written on the death of his wife's cousin : 

" PRESSO AL MATTINO DEL VOR SI SOGNA.— Dante 

" Love, let's be thankful we are past the time 
When griefs are comfortless ; and, though we mourn, 
Feel in our sorrow something now sublime, 
And in each tear the sweetness of a kiss. 
Weep on and smile then: for we know in this, 
Our immortality, that nothing dies 
Within our hearts, but something new is born; 
And what is roughly taken from our eyes 
Gently comes back in visions of the morn 
When dreams are truest." 

Milton, invoking his heavenly muse, Ourania, 
says: 

" On evil days though fallen and evil tongues, 
In darkness and with darkness compassed round, 
And solitude; yet not alone while thou 
Visit' st my slumbers nightly or when morn 
Purples the east." 

Pope, in his Temple of Fame, founded upon 
Chaucer's House of Fame, says: 

" A balmy sleep had charmed my cares to rest, 
And love itself was banished from my breast 
{What time the morn mysterious visions brings 
While purer slumbers spread their golden wings); 
A train of phantoms in wild order rose, 
And joined, this intellectual scene compose." 
128 



^Eneas and the River God 

Dry den, in his version of The Tale of the Nun's 
Priest, says: 

" Believe me, madam, morning dreams foreshow 
Th' event of things, and future weal and woe." 

Virgil tells us that when his hero iEneas was 
laying the foundations of the Roman Empire in 
Latium and was much disturbed by the anxieties 
which beset him, having laid down his weary 
limbs to give them some long-needed rest, Tiber, 
the river god, appeared to him, encouraged him 
not to flinch from his purpose, not to be dismayed 
by threats of hostility, but with the first setting 
stars to offer prayers to Juno and by suppliant 
vows vanquish her resentment and threats, assur- 
ing him finally of his success. When the river 
god had finished he hid himself in the deep lake, 
while iEneas at the dawn of day awoke and pro- 
ceeded to put up to htm a prayer of thanks, with 
promises to rely upon his aid and to sacrifice upon 
his altars. 

It is a very curious fact, and very proper to be 
noted in this place, that morning prayers and 
adorations among the early Romans were put up 
to the celestial gods, and those of the evening to 
the infernal. 



CHAPTER IX 

Our external and our internal memory — Coleridge's " body 
terrestrial" and "body celestial " — The operations of 
our non-phenomenal life presumably as important as 
those of our phenomenal life. 



WHENEVER we seriously exercise our reason- 
ing faculties we abstract ourselves from the phe- 
nomenal world, and just in proportion to the 
profundity of our thought, or the degree of our 
interest in the subject of our meditations, will be 
the completeness of our abstraction. Few realize 
that the mind while in that state has nothing 
more to do with the external world than a mill 
has to do with producing, shelling, or transporting 
the grain that is thrown into its hopper. The 
mill only grinds what is put into it. The rapidity 
of the mind's action is so great that we have no 
faculties capable of perceiving when the several 
operations of the mind, memory, and will begin 
and end in reaching any conclusion. The fingers 
of the musician seem to run over the keys of the 
piano with the rapidity of lightning, but the will, 
mind, and memory act independently at every 
note. The will indicates the note to be produced, 
the memory reports the key that produces that 
130 



Greek Temples of the Muses 

note, the mind selects the proper finger and directs 
that note to be struck. There the mind would 
rest if the will and the memory did not suggest 
another note. This process is repeated through- 
out the score, until the tune is finished. The 
mind is a servant of the will, of which the memory 
is a messenger. Through them the mind is oc- 
cupied with phenomenal life. Suspend the action 
of the external memory, however, and then the 
mind works independently of the external or phe- 
nomenal world, and that we suppose to be its con- 
dition in sleep. 

" Near the Temple of the Muses, built by Arda- 
tus, son of Vulcan/' Pausanias tells us, " there is 
an ancient altar which Ardatus is reported to have 
dedicated. Upon this altar they sacrifice to the 
Muses and to Sleep, asserting that Sleep, above 
all the deities, is friendly to the Muses." 

Some modern metaphysicians insist that we 
are endowed with a subjective and objective mind 
and corresponding memories. The difference be- 
tween the two memories would be that we should 
employ the word " memory'' when we wish to 
designate the subjective intelligence, and the 
word "recollection" to designate the objective 
intelligence. Memory in this sense is the active 
retention and distinct recognition of past ideas 
in the mind, while recollection is the power of 
recalling — of re-collecting ideas which have once 
been in the mind but are for the time being for- 
gotten. 

131 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Subjective memory is regarded as retaining all 
ideas, however superficially they may have been 
impressed on the objective mind, and it admits of 
no variation of power in individuals.* 

This notion of a subjective memory corresponds 
in the main with what Sir William Hamilton des- 
ignated as " mental latency/' holding that all 
recollection consisted in rescuing from the store- 
house of latent memory some part of its treasure. 
He assumed latent memory to be perfect, but 
while he considered it a normal mental process 
to elevate a part of the latent treasures of the 
mind above the plane of consciousness, he rec- 
ognizes the fact that it is only under the most 
abnormal conditions that the whole content of 
the magazine of latent intelligence can be brought 
to light. He says : 

" The second degree of latency exists when the mind 
contains certain systems of knowledge or certain habits 
of action which it is wholly unconscious of possessing 
in its ordinary state, but which are revealed to con- 
sciousness in certain extraordinary exaltations of its 
powers. The evidence on this point shows that the 
mind frequently contains whole systems of knowledge 
which, though in our normal state they may have faded 
into absolute oblivion, may, in certain abnormal states 
— as madness, febrile delirium, somnambulism, cata- 
lepsy, etc. — flash into luminous consciousness, and 
even throw into the shade of unconsciousness those 

* A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life, by 
Thomas J. Hudson, p. 212. 

132 



The Dual Memory 

other systems by which they had for a long period been 
eclipsed, and even extinguished. For example, there 
are cases in which the extinct memory of whole lan- 
guages was suddenly restored, and — what is even still 
more remarkable — in which the faculty was exhibited 
of accurately repeating, in known or unknown tongues, 
passages which were never within the grasp of con- 
scious memory in the normal state. This degree, this 
phenomenon of latency, is one of the most marvellous 
in the whole compass of philosophy." 

He then cites some most remarkable instances 
demonstrative of the perfection of subjective 
memory. 

Both of these philosophers were, consciously 
or unconsciously, indebted, no doubt, for what- 
ever is true — and there is much in both that is 
true — to Swedenborg. His theory of a dual mem- 
ory is more profound, more philosophical, and 
more comprehensive than either. He says: 

" It is scarce known to any one at this day, that every 
man has two memories — one exterior, the other interior ; 
and that the exterior is proper to his body, but the in- 
terior proper to his spirit. . . . 

" These two memories are altogether distinct from 
each other ; to the exterior memory, which is proper 
to man during his life in the world, appertain all ex- 
pressions by language, also all objects of which the 
senses take cognizance, and likewise the sciences which 
relate to the world : to the interior memory appertain the 
ideas of spirit, which are of the interior sight, and all 
rational things, from the ideas whereof thought itself 

133 



The Mystery of Sleep 

exists. That these things are distinct from each other 
is unknown to man, as well because he does not reflect 
thereupon, as because he is incorporate, and cannot 
so easily withdraw his mind from corporeal things. 

" Hence it is that men, during their life in the body, 
cannot discourse with each other but by languages 
distinguished into articulate sounds, and cannot un- 
derstand each other unless they are acquainted with 
those languages; the reason is, because this is done 
from the exterior memory ; whereas, spirits * converse 
with each other by a universal language distinguished 
into ideas, of their thought, and thus can converse with 
every spirit, of whatsoever language or nation he may 
have been; because this is done from the interior mem- 
ory; every man, immediately after death, comes into 
the comprehension of this universal language, because 
he comes into this interior memory, which is adapted 
to his spirit. 

" The speech of words, as just intimated, is the speech 
proper to man; and indeed, to his corporeal memory; 
but a speech consisting of ideas of thought is the speech 
proper to spirits; and, indeed, to the interior memory, 
which is the memory of spirits. It is not known to 
men that they possess this interior memory, because 
the memory of particular or material things, which is 
corporeal, is accounted every thing, and darkens that 
which is interior; when, nevertheless, without interior 
memory, which is proper to the spirit, man would not 
be able to think at all. 

* " Spiritus inter se loquantur per linguam universalem, 
in ideas, quales sunt ipsius cogitationis, distinctam et sic 
quod conversari possint cum unoquovis spiritu cujuscumque 
linguae et nationis in mundo fuerat." — Arcana Coelestia, 
§ 1772. 

134 



The Dual Memory 

" Whatsoever things a man hears and sees, and is 
affected with, these are insinuated, as to ideas and final 
motives or ends, into his interior memory, without his 
being aware of it, and there they remain, so that not 
a single impression is lost, although the same things 
are obliterated in the exterior memory; the interior 
memory, therefore, is such, that there are inscribed in 
it all the particular things, yea, the most particular, 
which man has at any time thought, spoken, and done, 
yea, which have appeared to him only shadowy, with 
the most minute circumstances, from his earliest in- 
fancy to extreme old age : man has with him the mem- 
ory of all these things when he comes into another life, 
and is successively brought into all recollection of them ; 
this is the Book of his Life (Liber ejus Vitae), which is 
opened in another life, and according to which he is 
judged ; all final motives or ends of his life, which were 
to him obscure; all that he had thought, and likewise 
all that he had spoken and done, as derived from those 
ends, are recorded, to the most minute circumstances, 
in that Book, that is, in the interior memory, and are 
made manifest before the angels, in a light as clear as 
day, whensoever the Lord sees good to permit it: this 
has at times been shown me, and evidenced by so much 
and various experience, that there does not remain the 
smallest doubt concerning it.* 

* Referring to a singular experience which fell under 
his own observation while a student at Gottingen, S. T. 
Coleridge makes a comment which warrants us in sup- 
posing that he was, consciously or unconsciously, indebted 
to Swedenborg for it. He says : 

" This fact — it would not be difficult to adduce several 
of a similar kind — contributes to make it even probable 
that all thoughts are in themselves imperishable; and that 
if the intelligent faculty should be rendered more compre- 

135 



The Mystery of Sleep 

" Men, during their abode in the world, who are prin- 
cipled in love to the Lord, and in charity toward their 
neighbor, have with themselves, and in themselves, 
angelic intelligence and wisdom, but hidden in the in- 
most of their interior memory; which intelligence and 
wisdom can by no means appear to them, before they 
put off things corporeal; then the memory of particulars 
spoken of above is laid asleep, and they are awakened 
to the interior memory, and afterward to the angelic 
memory itself.* 

" A certain spirit, recently deceased, was indignant 
at not being able to remember more of the things which 
he had knowledge of during his life in the body, sorrow- 

hensive it would require only a differently apportioned 
organization — the body celestial instead of the body ter- 
restrial — to bring before every human soul the collective 
experience of its whole past. And this, perchance, is the 
Book of Judgment, in the dread hieroglyphics of which 
every idle word is recorded. Yea, in the very nature of a 
living spirit, it may be more possible that heaven and earth 
should pass away than that a single act, a single thought, 
should be loosened or lost from that living chain of causes 
with all the links of which, conscious or unconscious, the 
free-will, our only absolute self, is co-extensive and co- 
present." — Biographia Literaria, Coleridge's Works, Har- 
per & Brothers, 1853, vol. iii. p. 229. 

* " The French army at this time," says Count La Vallette, 
who was serving with it in Egypt, under the first Napoleon, 
" was remarkably free from any feeling of religion." The 
Count tells a curious anecdote of a French officer who was 
with him on a boat which was nearly wrecked. The officer 
said the " Lord's Prayer " from beginning to end. When 
the danger was over he was much ashamed, and apologized 
thus : " I am thirty-eight years old, and I have never 
uttered a prayer since I was six. I cannot understand 
how it came into my head just then, for I declare that at 
this moment it would be impossible for me to remember 
a word of it." 

I36 



The Dual Memory 

ing on account of the delight which he had lost, and 
with which he had formerly been particularly gratified ; 
but he was informed, that in reality he had lost nothing, 
and that he then knew all and every thing which he 
had ever known, but that in another life it was not allow- 
able for him to call forth such things to observation; 
and that he should be satisfied to reflect, that it was 
now in his power to think and speak much better and 
more perfectly, without immersing his rational principle, 
as before, in the gross, obscure, material, and corporeal 
things which were of no use in the kingdom to which he 
was now come; and that those things which were in the king- 
dom of the world, were left behind, and he had now what- 
ever conduced to the use of eternal life, whereby he might 
be blessed and happy ; thus that it was a proof of igno- 
rance to believe, that in another life there is any loss 
of intelligence in consequence of not using the corporeal 
memory, when the real case is, that in proportion as the 
mind is capable of being withdrawn from things sensual 
and corporeal, in the same proportion it is elevated into 
things celestial and spiritual." * 

Speaking of the punishments Ox some of the 
evil spirits in hell, Swedenborg says : 

" Wondering that they were so severely punished, 
I perceived that it was because their crime was of so enor- 
mous a kind, arising from the necessity there is that man 
should sleep in safety, since otherwise the human race 
must necessarily perish. I was also made aware that 
the same thing occurs, although man is ignorant of the 
fact, in reference to others, whom these spirits endeavor 
by their artifices to assault during sleep; for unless 

* Arcana Coelestia, vol. i. §§ 2469-2479. 
137 



The Mystery of Sleep 

it be given to converse with spirits, being with them 
by internal sense, it is impossible to hear, and much 
more to see, such things, notwithstanding they happen 
alike to all. The Lord is particularly watchful over 
man during sleep. Dominus quam tnaxime custodit 
hominem cum dormit." * 

" Some, by a peculiar mercy, are prepared for heaven 
by deep sleep and by dreams which infest them in 
sleep." t 

" Others have loved the world ; but they are kept in 

a state of sleep until the delight of the world has been 

lulled."! 

" When corporal and voluntary things are quiescent 
the Lord operates." § 

" There is no separation of evil but through its quies- 
cence, nor does it quiesce except from the Lord, and 
when it thus quiesces goods inflow from the Lord." || 

We find in the passages here cited: 
First. A recognition of the existence in man 
of two mnemonical functions, each quite distinct 
from the other; one which takes note of all our 
thoughts and acts having an apparent bearing 
upon our external or phenomenal life in this world ; 
the other, which not only takes note of those events, 
but which takes note also of the moral quality, 
of the ultimate end in which such thoughts or 
acts originated. 

Secondly. That while some of the impres- 
sions which are recorded in what Swedenborg 

* Arcana Coelestia, vol. i. 959. f Spiritual Diary, 427. 

% Spiritual Diary, 4199. § Arcana Coelestia, 933. 

IJ Arcana Coelestia, 1581- 

138 



^W.^Kgttfcfc 



The Dual Memory 

calls the external memory are ultimately obliter- 
ated, all which are recorded in what he calls the 
internal memory remain, to the most minute par- 
ticular and shade, from the earliest infancy, and 
are absolutely imperishable. 

Thirdly. That as in the spiritual world there 
are no limitations of time, space, or sense, all 
communication is, not by the language of words, 
as in the phenomenal world, but by the ideas 
which phenomena express or represent, and as 
ideas are not subject to any of the limitations of 
time, space, or sense, the end or final purpose of 
our thoughts or acts are all that leave a perma- 
nent impression, just as the story or the thought is 
all that is left on the reader's mind by the printed 
page. In the words of Swedenborg, " Actions have 
their quality from the thoughts, as thoughts have 
their quality from the ends purposed." 

Fourthly. That in proportion as man puts off 
"things corporeal," as he is emancipated from 
his material, sensual, worldly thrall, he is awak- 
ened to a perception of the intelligence and wis- 
dom stirred up in his interior memory. 

There is nothing in our sacred writings, nor, I 
believe, in any man's experience, which can be 
said to conflict with or render improbable either 
of these propositions. Be that as it may, from 
what we may fairly claim to know from our own 
experience and observation of the phenomena 
of sleep, and from what we are bound to infer 
from the teachings of the sacred writings of all 

139 



The Mystery of Sleep 

sects and nations of most considerable acceptance 
throughout the world, and especially from the 
Christian's Bible, it seems impossible to resist 
the conclusion that the final purposes of our crea- 
tion and existence, of our esse and our existere, 
are not only as operative during our sleeping as 
during our waking hours, and that a work is 
being wrought in us, a process is going on in 
us, during those hours, which is not and cannot 
be wrought so effectually, if at all, at any other 
time ; that we are spiritually growing, developing, 
ripening more continuously, while thus shielded 
from the distracting influences of the phenomenal 
world, than during the hours in which we are 
absorbed by them; that, in the language of the 
pagan philosopher, "the night-time of the body 
is the daytime of the soul/' Our phenomenal 
life has its specific lessons for us. Why should 
not our non-phenomenal life also have its specific 
lessons for us? Why should we doubt that it is 
in sleep that God "openeth the ears of men and 
sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw 
man from his purpose and hide pride from man/' 
and " that he may keep back his soul from the 
pit"? Does not all that we know of sleep, and 
of its effects upon character, tend to confirm ev- 
ery line and every word of this definite and un- 
conditional and authoritative statement of Job's 
sympathizing friend? If there is a single precept 
of our faith more frequently urged and insisted 
upon by the Christian Church than any other it 
140 



- - — 



Overcoming the World 

is the necessity of "overcoming the world." The 
devil is called the prince of this world. He boasted 
of the fact to Jesus. The " world " is a synonym 
for all sorts of sensual lusts and pleasures, and 
for all undue greed for wealth, dignities, and 
honors. To overcome the world, to rise superior 
to its temptations, so that they shall not corrupt 
our life or blind our judgment, is uniformly present- 
ed to us by the Christian Church, as it has been 
by the most enlightened pagan sects, as the su- 
preme end and purpose of our life in the flesh. 
Is it not precisely the function of sleep to give 
us for a portion of every day in our lives a res- 
pite from worldly influences which, uninterrupted, 
would deprive us of the instruction, of the spiritual 
reinforcements necessary to qualify us to turn 
our waking experience of the world to the best 
account without being overcome by them? It 
is in these hours that the plans and ambitions 
of our external, worldly life cease to interfere 
with or obstruct the flow of the divine life into 
the will. And in these hours may we not be, 
is it not more than probable that we are, in the 
society of those "ministering spirits" referred to 
by Paul " who are sent forth to do service for the 
sake of them that shall inherit salvation"? 

The moral distinction between lower animals 
and man is curiously illustrated in the character 
of their sleep. A man ordinarily awakens slowly 
from a deep sleep; he does not for a time realize 
where he is ; he seems to be more or less dazed and 

141 



The Mystery of Sleep 

not entirely satisfied with the change which seems 
to him to have taken place. He is apt to act for 
a few moments as though he had been in a place 
or society which he was reluctant to leave. As 
Charles Lamb expressed it, he wishes to lie a 
little longer to digest his dreams. 

A sleeping dog, however, will hear a noise 
which his master, though by his side, awake, will 
not hear, and in an instant is in as full possession 
of all his faculties as if he had not been sleeping. 
He betrays no evidence of having reluctantly 
parted with pleasant company or pleasant occu- 
pations. And why should he? He has no af- 
fections for his kind when awake for which he 
would sacrifice a bone, though he did not wish 
it himself. 

Is not this precisely what we should expect 
from the psychical difference of the dog from the 
man? And does it not warrant the conclusion 
that when a man is sleeping his condition and 
associations are as different from a dog's as they 
are while awake? 



CHAPTER X 

In sleep we die daily — God alone is life — All causes 
are spiritual — All phenomena are results — Scipio's 
dream — Sleep and death twins. 



HAVING, as I think, established at least a 
violent presumption that something of supreme 
importance is being operated within us during 
our sleeping hours ; that that something concerns 
our spiritual training and development; and that 
this view is countenanced, not only by some of the 
most eminent thinkers of all time, but by what 
Christians call the Word of God ; may we not pen- 
etrate a little further into the mysteries of those 
consecrated hours? 

We are warranted in saying that the constit- 
uents of every human being are either material 
or spiritual, either body or soul. No one has 
any attributes or qualities that do not come under 
one or the other of these rubrics. Neither can it 
be successfully disputed that all matter is inert, 
is incapable of initiating or of arresting motion ; 
that it can neither be increased nor diminished 
in volume. Its arrangement or form may be 
changed, but not its quantity. It has, therefore, 
no life in itself, though, like a house or a garment, 

143 



The Mystery of Sleep 

it may be the habitation of life of what we call 
the soul, or spirit. 

It is true that the tree drops its fruit and its 
leaves in their season, but neither tree, leaf, nor 
fruit dies; they merely pass into a new form of 
life, as man is presumed to do when his heart 
ceases to beat. This habitation returns to its 
elements, or some other form, neither increased 
nor impaired in quantity by the change. In the 
language of Juvenal : 

" Mors sola fatetur 
Quantula sint hominum corpuscula." 

But what becomes of the tenant? We neither 
know nor can conceive of anything having oc- 
curred to the soul more certain than, or beyond the 
fact, that it has been emancipated from the re- 
strictions of its prison-house and set free to do, 
be, or become whatever it has been prepared for 
becoming during its earthly confinement. 

This spirit was all of the man that was or could 
have been substantial to him. It possessed and 
represented all he had or knew of life. It was 
all there was or is of any one's I am. 

" There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins: 
Such harmony is in immortal souls; 
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." * 

* " Merchant of Venice," act v. scene I. 
144 



God Alone is Life 
Milton describes the death of Jesus as 

" a death like sleep; 
A gentle drifting to immortal life." * 

So when Adam communicated to Eve the con- 
ditions upon which they were to leave Paradise, 
the poet adds: 

" For God is also in sleep, and dreams advise/' 

All life emanates from our Creator, who is life 
itself, and necessarily the source of all life — a 
doctrine I was gratified to find dogmatically and 
most impressively stated quite recently by the 
head of the most numerous division of the Christian 
Church. Pope Leo XIII., in an encyclical issued 
from the Vatican in November, 1901 A.D., said: 

" God alone is life. All other things partake of life, 
but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by his 
very nature, is 'the Life/ just as He is the Truth, be- 
cause He is God of God. From Him, as from its most 
sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade 
creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, 
lives by Him. For ' by the Word all things were made ; 
and without Him was made nothing that was made/ " 

The same view of the origin of life and the great 
distinction between divine and natural, or sec- 
ondary, causes was proclaimed in Rome nearly 
twenty centuries before this encyclical from our 
contemporary Pontifex Maximus, and under cir- 

* Paradise Lost, xii. 430. 
I45 



The Mystery of Sleep 

cumstances which lend a peculiar interest to it. 
The world is indebted to Cicero for the record 
of it, and to Macrobius for finding it after it had 
been supposed, for some fifteen centuries, to be 
irrevocably lost. I refer to the extraordinary 
vision attributed to Publius Cornelius Scipio, 
the second Scipio Africanus, while he was the 
military tribune in Africa and the guest of Prince 
Massanissa. 

The night after his arrival, and after much 
talk about politics and government, but mostly 
of his ancestor, known as the first Africanus, 
Scipio retired to rest, and, as he said, "A sleep 
sounder than ordinary came over me." In his 
sleep he represents Africanus the elder to have 
presented himself, and to have predicted many 
things, favorable and menacing, to his descendant. 

"Upon your single person/' said Africanus, 
"the preservation of your country will depend; 
and, in short, it is your part, as dictator, to settle 
the government, if you can but escape the im- 
pious hands of your kinsmen. . . . 

"But that you may be more earnest in the 
defence of your country, know from me that a 
certain place in heaven, where they are to enjoy 
an endless duration of happiness, is assigned to 
all who have preserved, or assisted, or improved 
their country. For there is nothing which takes 
place on earth more acceptable to that Supreme 
Deity who governs all this world than those 
councils and assemblies of men bound together 
146 



Scipio's Dream 

by law which are termed states; the governors 
and preservers of these go hence, and hither do 
they return/' 

"Here/' says Scipio, "frightened as I was, 
not so much from the dread of death as of the 
treachery of my friends, I asked him whether 
my father Paulus and others whom we thought 
to be dead were yet alive. 'To be sure they are 
alive/ replied Africanus, 'for they have escaped 
from the fetters of the body as from a prison. That 
which you call your life is really death. But 
behold your father Paulus approaching you/ 
No sooner did I see him/' says Scipio, "than I 
poured forth a flood of tears; but he, embracing 
and kissing me, forbade me to w^eep. And when, 
having suppressed my tears, I began first to 
speak, 'Why/ said I, 'thou most sacred and ex- 
cellent father, since this is life, as I hear Africanus 
affirm, why do I tarry on earth, and not hasten 
to come to you?' 

"'Not so, my son/ he replied. 'Unless that 
God whose temple is all this w T hich you behold 
shall free you from this imprisonment in the body 
you can have no admission to this place ; for men 
have been created under this condition, that they 
should keep that globe which you see in the middle 
of this temple, and which is called the earth. And 
a soul has been supplied to them from those eternal 
fires which you call constellations and stars, and 
which, being globular and round, are animated 
with divine spirit, and complete their cycles and 

147 



The Mystery of Sleep 

revolutions with amazing rapidity. Therefore 
you, my Publius, and all good men, must pre- 
serve your souls in the keeping of your bodies; 
nor without the order of that Being who bestowed 
them upon you, are you to depart from mundane 
life, lest you seem to desert the duty of a man, 
which has been assigned you by God. There- 
fore, Scipio, like your grandfather here, and me, 
who begot you, cultivate justice and piety, which, 
while it should be great towards your parents and 
relations, should be greatest towards your coun- 
try. Such a life is the path to heaven and the 
assembly of those who have lived before, and 
who, having been released from their bodies, in- 
habit that place which thou beholdest.'" 

"Truly, Africanus," said the junior Scipio, 
" since the path to heaven lies open to those who 
have deserved well of their country, though from 
my childhood I have ever trod in your and my 
father's footsteps without disgracing your glory, 
yet now, with so noble a prize set before me, 1 
shall strive with much more diligence. 

"'Do so strive/ replied he, 'and do not consider 
yourself, but your body, to be mortal. For you 
are not the being which this corporeal figure evinces; 
but the soul of every man is the man, and not that 
form which may be pointed at with a finger. Know, 
therefore, that you are a divine person. Since it is 
divinity that has consciousness, sensation, memory, 
and foresight — that governs, regulates, and moves 
that body over which it has been appointed, just 
148 



Scipio's Dream 

as the Supreme Deity rules this world; and in 
like manner, as an eternal God guides this world, 
which in some respects is perishable, so an eternal 
spirit animates your frail body. 

"'For that which is ever moving is eternal. 
Now, that which communicates to another object 
a motion which it received elsewhere must neces- 
sarily cease to live as soon as its motion is at an 
end. Thus the being which is self -motive is the 
only being that is eternal, because it never is 
abandoned by its own properties, neither is this 
self-motion ever at an end; nay, this is the foun- 
tain, this is the beginning of motion to all things 
that are thus subjects of motion. 

"'Since, therefore, it is plain that whatever is 
self-motive must be eternal, who can deny that 
this natural property is bestowed upon our minds ? 
For everything that is moved by a foreign im- 
pulse is inanimate, but that which is animate 
is impelled by an inward and peculiar principle 
of motion; and in that consists the nature and 
property of the soul. Now, if it alone of all 
things is self -motive, assuredly it never was 
originated, and is eternal. Do thou, therefore, 
employ it in the noblest of pursuits, and the 
noblest of cares are those for the safety of thy 
country/ 

"He vanished, and I awoke from my sleep/' 

This story comes to us as a dream. Whether 
a dream, a vision, or a meditation, science knows 

149 



The Mystery of Sleep 

nothing and can presume nothing in conflict with 
this pagan's view either of life or death. 

We absolutely know nothing of life which 
warrants us in attributing to it perishability ; 
nor have we any reason to presume that with the 
change called death anything perishes, or that 
anything more has really occurred than a separa- 
tion of the tenant from his habitation — of the soul 
from its material prison. Neither have we more 
reason to suppose that the spirit, or soul, has 
become less a soul, less an individual life, than 
that the matter with which it was clothed has 
been diminished in quantity by the separation. 
The destructibility of matter was, until com- 
paratively recent times, just as popular a belief, 
and even more universally prevalent than is now 
that of the extinction of life when the soul leaves 
the body. Nor can science produce any evidence 
that the one belief was any more fallacious than 
the other. We are sent into this world and in- 
vested with material garments in order that we 
may be qualified to study and comprehend divine 
laws. The phenomenal world into which we are 
born is a kind of kindergarten where those di- 
vine laws are illustrated and made intelligible to 
our undeveloped and limited intelligence, through 
the operations of what we call Nature. It is 
a stage in our education when the phenomenal 
world is a necessity to us, as the hornbook and 
black-board are to school - children. When we 
have learned all the lessons in this kindergarten 
150 



How Far Sleep is Death 

by which we are likely to profit we leave that 
school ; and in leaving it, we assume the larger 
liberty of that higher life where time and space 
only signify differences in moral conditions; 
where, as in this life, we will seek the associa- 
tion and companionship of those with whom we 
shall then have most affinity. 

All these, I say, are presumptions; and the 
burden of proof lies upon those who would un- 
dertake to maintain the contrary in any of these 
particulars. 

Now, after we have shaken off this mortal coil 
and entered the world of spirits, in what respect 
does our condition differ from that of sleep? In 
both, our consciousness of this phenomenal world 
— of the kindergarten — has been entirely suspend- 
ed. It is true that from sleep we awaken, sooner 
or later, to a consciousness of our incorporate 
limitations, while from death we do not awake. 
But is the difference any more than this — that in 
one case our carriage is left standing at the door 
to take us back again, while in the other we have 
no animus revertendi? Having reached home, 
we have no further use for our carriage and it 
is dismissed. 

Nay, what reason have we for doubting that 
during our sleep we are in substantially the same 
society and surrounded by similar, if not the same, 
influences as we should be were we never again 
to awake? We cannot conceive that the aban- 
donment of our earthly habitation, the laying 

151 



The Mystery of Sleep 

aside of our garments, the deliverance from our 
prison, has deprived us of any of the qualities or 
attributes which constituted our being, except upon 
the theory of utter extinction by the separation. 
The spirit, or soul, inhabits the body, but is no 
more a part of it than the heat generated in a 
furnace is a part of the furnace or the light in our 
chamber is a part of the chamber. The inhabitants 
of the spiritual world are presumed to know noth- 
ing of the limitations of time or space. There 
is no manifest reason, therefore, wiry we should 
not always be accessible to and in intercourse 
with them, unless when too preoccupied by the dis- 
tractions of our environment in the phenomenal 
world; nor for presuming that our post-mortem 
life will differ from our condition while sleeping, 
except that one is for a time and the other for 
eternity. As the spirit during sleep is presump- 
tively as free as it ever will be from all the re- 
strictions of sense, what reason is there for doubt- 
ing that we enter at once into a life and a society 
substantially the same as that awaiting us when 
we enter into "the sleep that knows no waking"? 

This presumption is strengthened by the fact 
that we can bring back no more information of 
what occurs to us in our temporary sleeps than 
we can from the spiritual world when we shall 
sleep with our fathers. 

During our sleep we have no more power over 
anything in this phenomenal world than, while 
we are awake, we have over the spiritual world; 
152 



How Far Sleep is Death 

and yet, while asleep, we retain, in full activity, 
all the powers to act upon the world about us, 
save only the power or inclination to exert them. 
While this condition continues, what other or 
greater change could be wrought in us by death? 
When we reflect upon the extraordinary change, 
psychological and physical, which we experience 
after a night's sound sleep, by what theory can 
that change be so satisfactorily and so rationally 
explained as to suppose that we have been tem- 
porarily in association with those who have pre- 
ceded us to the spirit land? What is there im- 
probable in this? What more entirely consistent 
with divine goodness? What so admirably, what 
so exclusively adapted to work the change which 
in the morning we realize has been worked in 
us during our slumbering? How very much more 
probable this, than that one-third of each day of 
our lives is permitted to go to waste, for which 
there is no imaginable explanation better than 
that a Creator, of infinite wisdom, could not fash- 
ion us in his image in any way that did not in- 
volve that waste — an absurd presumption. 

While in a swoon or in immediate peril of drown- 
ing, as in some other cases of temporarily sus- 
pended action of the heart and lungs, persons 
have remained for hours, and even weeks, without 
any consciousness of the phenomenal life. Dur- 
ing this suspended consciousness it is difficult 
to imagine any psychological difference between 
their condition and death. 

153 



The Mystery of Sleep 

The evidence is practically unanimous that 
while in a swoon or while near drowning, one's 
experience, instead of being painful, is altogether 
agreeable, even blissful, and entirely free from 
the concern and anxiety with which the prospect 
of death is ordinarily contemplated when awake. 

An impressive illustration of what the death 
of the natural body means comes to us through 
the following Persian story, abridged from Sir 
Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia: 

"DEATH OF ABDALLAH 

" Faithful friends, it lies, I know, 
Pale and white, and cold as snow; 
And ye say, ' Abdallah's dead/ 
Weeping at the feet and head. 
I can see your falling tears, 
I can hear your sighs and prayers; 
Yet I smile and whisper this: 
'I am not the thing you kiss! 
Cease your tears and let it lie; 
It was mine — it is not L' 

" Sweet friends, what the women lave 
For the last sleep of the grave 
Is the hut that I am quitting, 
Is the garment no more fitting, 
Is the cage from which at last, 
Like a bird, my soul has passed. 
Love the inmate, not the room; 
The wearer, not the garb — the plume 
Of the eagle, not the bars 
That keep him from the splendid stars. 

154 



How Far Sleep is Death 

" Loving friends, oh, rise and dry 
Straightway every weeping eye ; 
What ye lift upon the bier 
Is not worth one single tear. 
Tis an empty sea-shell — one 
Out of which the pearl is gone. 
The shell is broken, it lies there; 
The pearl, the all, the soul is here." 

If this resemblance of sleep to death should 
seem chimerical to any, I have only to say that 
the teachings of the Bible on that subject must 
seem equally so. In that sacred record death and 
sleep are frequently — I might almost say con- 
stantly — used as equivalents. 

Among the many marvels by which the death 
of Jesus on the cross was signalized, " the tombs 
were opened and many bodies of the saints that 
had fallen asleep were raised/' * 

In the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians he 
says: 

" For I delivered unto you first of all that which also 
I received, how that Christ died for our sins according 
to the scriptures ; and that he was buried ; and that he 
hath been raised on the third day according to the script- 
ures; and that he appeared to Cephas; then to the 
twelve; then he appeared to five hundred brethren at 
once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but 
some are fallen asleep." * 

In the same letter Paul says: 

* I Corinthians 15-20. f 1 Corinthians xv. 3-7. 

155 



The Mystery of Sleep 

" For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ 
been raised : and if Christ hath not been raised, your 
faith is vain; you are yet in your sins. Then they 
which are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If 
in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all 
most pitiable. But now hath Christ been raised from 
the dead, the first-fruits of them that are asleep." 

When Stephen was stoned to death for his 
loyalty to Jesus, he is reported to have kneeled 
down and cried with a loud voice, " Lord, lay 
not this to their charge. And when he had said 
this he fell asleep."* We have no other authority 
for saying that he died. 

Paul, in the thirteenth verse of the fourth chap- 
ter of his letter to the Thessalonians, says : 

" But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, 
concerning them that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, 
even as the rest, which have no hope. For if we believe 
that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that 
are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with him/' 

Also, in the ninth verse of the fifth chapter 
of his letter to the Thessalonians, he says: 

" For God appointed us not unto wrath, but unto the 
obtaining of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 
who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should 
live together with him." 

" Knowing this first that there shall come in the 
last days scoffers walking after their own lusts, and 

* Acts vii. 60. 

156 



How Far Sleep is Death 

saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since 
the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as from the 
beginning of the creation." * 

" David, after he had in his own generation served 
the counsel of God, fell on sleep and was laid unto his 
fathers." | 

When the sisters of Lazarus sought Jesus, to 
tell Him that their brother was dead, He replied 
to them: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I 
go that I may awake him out of sleep." Then 
said his disciples : " If he sleep he shall do well " ; 
howbeit Jesus spoke of his death. But they- 
thought He had spoken of taking rest in sleep. 
Then said Jesus unto them, "Lazarus is dead." 

Here we find Jesus calling the separation of 
the soul from the material body, which the dis- 
ciples termed death, sleep; and it was not till the 
disciples showed that they misunderstood Him 
that He said, "Lazarus is dead." 

The brethren of Lazarus said he was dead; 
Jesus said he slept. Did not both tell the truth? 

When the prophet Elisha learned that the child 
of the Shunammite woman was dead he gave 
his servant Gehazi his staff and directed him to 
go and lay it upon the child. He did so, but was 
obliged to report to Elisha that " there was neither 
voice nor hearing. The child is not awaked." 

Elisha then came and found "the child was dead 
and laid upon his bed." He went in, shut to the 

* 2 Peter iii. 3. t Acts xiii. 36. 

157 



The Mystery of Sleep 

door, excluding all but the boy and himself and 
prayed unto the Lord. Then, after embracing 
him, "the flesh of the child waxed warm/' Pres- 
ently he sent for the mother and said to her, 
"Take up thy son." 

Here the child had been dead. But all life 
comes from the Lord, and, in answer to the 
prophet's prayer, his body was warmed into 
life again; or, to use Gehazi's expression, was 
"awaked." * 

The daughter of Jairus was given up for dead 
by her family. "Why make ye a tumult, and 
weep?" said Jesus, when He arrived, in response 
to a message from the father. " The child is not 
dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to 
scorn. But he, having put them all forth, taketh 
the father of the child and her mother and them 
that were with him, and goeth in where the 
child was. And taking the child by the hand, he 
saith unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being 
interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise. And 
straightway the damsel rose up, and walked ; for 
she was twelve years old." f 

Again in I Kings i. 21 : 

" Otherwise it shall come to pass, when my lord the 
king shall sleep with his fathers, that I and my son Sol- 
omon shall be counted offenders." 



* 2 Kings iv. 30-37. 

t Mark v. 39 ; see also Acts ix. 10 ; xii. 6 ; Canticles v. 2 
Hosea xii. 10; Jeremiah xxxi. 26; John xi. II. 

158 



How Far Sleep is Death 

In the thirty-ninth verse of the fifty-first chap- 
ter of Jeremiah we read: 

" When they are heated, I will make their feast ; and 
I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and 
sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the Lord." 

Secular and profane authority help to show 
how universally the conditions of sleep and death 
were assimilated in the popular mind throughout 
the ages. 

It was the common belief of the ancient philos- 
ophers of Greece and Rome that the causes of 
sleep and death were the same. A place was 
assigned them in their Pantheon as brothers. 
Sleep was regarded both by the Epicureans and 
the Stoics, as well as by Plato, as death, follow- 
ed by a resurrection. " Latet meus oppressa 
somno," says Lactantius, "tanquam ignis ob- 
ducto cinere sopitus, quern si paulatim commo- 
veris, rursus ardescit et quasi evigilabat." 

Lucretius illustrates the same idea by the same 
metaphor : * 

" cinere ut multa latet obrutus ignis, 
Unde reconflari sensus per membra repente 
Possit, ut ex igni Cseco consurgere flamma." 

Pausanias, describing the inscriptions on a 
chest, or cypsela, says: 

" On the other side of the chest, beginning from the 

* De Rerum Natura, liber iv. 
159 



The Mystery of Sleep 

left hand, you will see a woman holding a white boy 
who is asleep, in her right hand, but in her left hand 
a black boy, who is likewise asleep and whose feet are 
distorted. The inscriptions signify — though you might 
infer without them — that these boys are Death and 
Sleep and that the Woman who is their nurse is Night." * 

So when in the Iliad the large-eyed. Juno re- 
monstrated with the "dread Son of Saturn" for 
wishing to deliver Sarpedon 

" from the common lot 
Of death, a mortal doomed long since by fate," 

she finally suggested an alternative which was 

embraced : 

" Yet if he be 
So dear to thee and thou dost pity him, 
Let him in mortal combat be o'ercome 
By Mensetiades, and when the breath 
Of life has left his frame, give thou command 
To Death and Gentle Sleep to bear him hence 
To the broad realm of Lycia. There his friends 
And brethren shall perform the funeral rites; 
There shall they build him up a tomb and rear 
A column — honors that become the dead." f 

After Sarpedon had been slain by Patroclus, 
the Cloud-Compeller spake to Phoebus thus: 

" Go now beloved Phoebus, and withdraw 
Sarpedon from the weapons of his foes; 

* Pausanias, book v. ch. 18. 

t Homer's Iliad, Bryant's translation, book xvi. 565-575. 

160 



How Far Sleep is Death 

Cleanse him from the dark blood and bear him thence, 
And lave him- in the river-stream, and shed 
Ambrosia o'er him. Clothe him then in robes 
Of heaven, consigning him to Sleep and Death, 
Twin brothers, and swift bearers of the dead; 
And they shall lay him in Lycia's fields, 
That broad and opulent realm — " etc. 

Apollo instantly obeyed his father, sought the 
field of battle, bore off Sarpedon, 

" And laved him in the river-stream and shed 
Ambrosia o'er him. Then in robes of heaven 
He clothed him, giving him to Sleep and Death, 
Twin brothers and swift bearers of the dead, 
And they, with speed conveying it, laid down 
The corpse in Lycia's broad and opulent realm." * 

Here Death and Sleep are twice designated as 
brothers and a third time are sent together on 
the same errand, implying functional equality. 

Of the Golden Age, or Edenic period, Hesiod, 
the father of Greek poetry, said: 

" As gods they lived, void of care, apart from labors 
and trouble; nor was wretched old age impending, and 
they died as if overcome by sleep." 

Xenophon, as quoted by Cicero, represents 
Cyrus, King of Persia, saying to his children on 
his death-bed: 

" Do not believe, my dear children, that when I shall 

* Homer's Iliad, Brant's translation, book xvi. 833-853. 
" l6l 



The Mystery of Sleep 

have quitted you I shall be nowhere and no more {nun- 
quam aut nullum fore). While I was with you you did 
not see my soul ; you only comprehended by my actions 
that this body was animated by one. I have never 
been able to persuade myself that souls that live while 
in mortal bodies, when they leave them die. I cannot 
believe that they lose all intelligence in quitting bodies 
that are essentially destitute of intelligence. When 
death disunites the human frame, we clearly see what 
becomes of its material parts; they apparently return 
to the several elements out of which they were com- 
posed ; but the soul continues to remain invisible, both 
while present in the body and when it leaves it. 

" You know, my children, that nothing more resem- 
bles death than sleep; and the sleep of souls chiefly pro- 
claims their divinity, for many of them foresee the future 
and show what they will become when they shall be 
freed from the prison of the body." * 

Sir Thomas Brown saw so little difference be- 
tween sleep and death that he dared not lie down 
in his bed at night without saying his prayers 
and having a colloquy with God. He says: 

" We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep, 
and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking 
of the soul. It is the litigation of sense, but the liberty 
of reason, and our waking conceptions do not match 
the fancies of our sleeps. I am no way facetious nor 
disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company. 
Yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, be- 
hold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself 

* Cicero, De Senectnte, ch. xxii. 
162 



Sir Thomas Brown 

awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as 
faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never 
study but in my dreams, and this time also would I 
choose for my devotions; but our grosser memories 
have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings 
that they forget the story, and can only relate to our 
awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that 
hath passed. 

" Thus it is sometimes observed that men some- 
times upon the hour of their departure do speak and 
reason above themselves; for then the soul, beginning 
to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to 
reason like herself and to discourse in a strain above 
mortality. 

" We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that 
kills us and destroys those spirits that are the house of 
life. It is indeed a part of life that best expresses death. 

"It is that death by which we may be said literally 
to die daily — a death which Adam died before his mor- 
tality ; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating 
point between life and death; in fine, so like death, I 
dare not trust it without my prayers and a half adieu 
unto the world, and take my farewell in a colloquy with 
God." * 

We have from the same distinguished physician 
the following lines, in which the identity of the 
states of sleep and death is, if possible, more dis- 
tinctly asserted : f 

* Sir Thomas Brown, b. 1605, d. 1682. Religio Medici, 
p. 131. 

t Evening Hymn, by Sir Thomas Brown. 

163 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Sleep is a death; make me try, 
By sleeping, what it is to die ; 
And as gently lay my head 
On my grave, as now my bed. 
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me 
Awake again at least with Thee. 
And thus assured, behold I lie, 
Securely, or to wake or die. 
These are my drowsy days ; in vain 
I do now wake to sleep again: 
come that hour, when I shall never 
Sleep again, but wake forever:" 

When these verses were written, Sir Thomas 
might have had in his mind the following lines 
of Heinrich Meibon, an Austrian poet - laureate, 
who died when Brown was but twenty years old : 

" Alma quies optata veni ; nam sic sine vita 
Vivere quam suave est. sic sine morte mori." * 

Henry Vaughan, the precursor of Wordsworth 
as the interpreter of the mystical and symbolical 
aspects of nature, in his verses entitled "The 
Morning Watch/' has the following lines, quoted 
in the Life and Times of Thomas Kettleiuell, by 

Francis Lee: 

" Prayer is 
The world in tune, 
A Spirit Voice 
And Vocall joyes, 

* Come, refreshing sleep, we pray ; 
For without life how sweet to live; 
Thus without death to die. 

164 



The Morning Watch 

Whose Echo is heaven's blisse. 

O let me climbe 
When I lye down. The pious soul by nighte 
Is like a clouded starre, whose beames, though said 

To shed their light 

Under some cloud, 

Yet are above, 

And shine and move 
Beyond that mystic shroud. 

So in my bed, 
That curtained grave, though sleep like ashes hide 
My lamp and life, both shall in Thee abide." 



CHAPTER XI 

" Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger 
of the hell of fire." 



IF I have been so fortunate as to carry any 
of my readers with me thus far, I hope they will 
be prepared to concede that any, even a partial, 
suspension of our consciousness weakens to a 
corresponding extent our bondage to the phenom- 
enal or material world; and, on the other hand, 
that the man who allows himself to be too long 
and too much interested in any worldly subject or 
employ sooner or later is liable to unbalance his 
mind and become at first a crank, and ultimately 
a lunatic. 

And this invites a consideration of some of 
the effects of the occasional interruptions of any 
current of thought or diversion of our mind from 
worldly interests that are becoming so absorbing 
as to threaten our spiritual freedom. 

It rarely occurs to any of us to consider how 
numerous and providential these interruptions are; 
and how felicitously they supplement the divinely 
appointed offices of sleep. 

How many of our household and family cares, 
how many of the exactions of children, of society, 

166 



Supplementary Sabbaths 

and of the countless interruptions which constitute 
the woof in the warp of every man's life, are provi- 
dentially thrust upon us like sleep, weakening 
the undue hold of the world upon our affections. 
We treat many of them as trifles ; at more of them 
we murmur and often rudely complain, frequently 
not shrinking from suicide, never thinking that 
they not only may be, but are, messengers of 
mercy — supplementary Sabbaths of divine ap- 
pointment. 

It is a prevailing impression, intrenched behind 
numerous proverbs, that all our time during our 
waking hours not employed in the prosecution 
of what may be generically called business is 
wasted, that a man who is not working for some 
worldly purpose to some worldly end is an idle 
man, and that an idle man is a drone, of no use 
to society, and, if our race w T ere as wise as the 
bee, we would expel him from it. 

This, as a rule, is a great delusion. The man 
who " sits silent " — to use a phrase of the Society 
of Friends — may certainly have one great ad- 
vantage of the busy man, for if not making the 
best possible use of his time, he is less likely to 
be the slave of this - worldliness than the busy 
man. His mind is more open and accessible to 
spiritual impressions, or, if you please, less liable 
to be preoccupied with worldly and selfish matters, 
than the more worldly man. 

It strikes most of us as a very original and 
surprising conceit of Milton, though it ought 

167 



The Mystery of Sleep 

to be with all of us the perfection of common- 
place, that 

" He also serves who only stands and waits." 

But how few there are in this driving age who 
really take any time to "wait," to listen to the 
still, small voices, to reflect, to dream. Instead 
of thinking themselves, they get the people of the 
press, the forum, or the market-place, to think 
for them. 

Nothing is spiritually more impoverishing for 
a man than to allow himself no time for dreaming ; 
to feed habitually, if not exclusively, upon other 
people's thoughts, and rarely or never upon his 
own. In that respect children ordinarily have 
the advantage of adults, the world not having 
yet reduced their imaginations to its stupefying 
bondage. In the language of the greatest of Ro- 
man satirists, in his quest of the means of living 
man forgets the ends of life. He fancies himself 
the source and proprietor of the power he wields, 
and that the " kingdom, power, and glory " is not 
his Creator's but his own. 

Joseph was called by his brethren a dreamer. 
These brethren were no mean types of modern 
society, which is constantly laying violent hands 
upon our faculties for dreaming, for waiting, 
and for thinking. Of the sisters of Lazarus, the 
modern world sympathizes most with Martha, 
who was careful and troubled about her house- 
168 



Supplementary Sabbaths 

keeping ; but it was not without a good reason 
that Jesus commended Mary. 

We never know why it rains just as we are 
setting out on a picnic; why a child falls sick 
as we are about to embark on a journey; why 
the news of a death in the family prevents our 
going to a dinner or a ball on which we had set 
our heart; why the bank failed in which we had 
left our money. Still less do we know from what 
evils they may have shielded us. We should 
never forget that none of our disappointments 
are fortuitous, nor that one of the most obvious 
and constant advantages we derive from them 
is the same as that for which we are in a larger 
degree indebted to sleep. 

Even sickness, the most familiar and universal 
deranger of the plans of men, is in most cases 
the result of too much this-worldliness, and also 
the most effective cure of it. 

In taking leave of his pupils at the College of 
Charlemagne in 1 84 1, in consequence of failing 
health, JoufTroy said: "Disease is certainly a 
grace with which God favors us — a sort of spirit- 
ual retreat which He provides us, that we may 
recognize ourselves, find ourselves, and restore 
to our sight the true view of things/' 

One of the greatest problems with which psy- 
chologists have been puzzled has been to ascertain 
the moral condition of an insane person — that 
is, of a person who attaches undue and dispro- 
portionate value to privileges and distinctions 

169 



The Mystery of Sleep 

of this world; whether it is, morally, a progres- 
sive, a passive, or a retrogressive state; and, if 
not progressive, how such a state is to be recon- 
ciled with that love of God which is supposed to be 
always operative over all his works. 

When Jesus was told that his father and mother 
were without, waiting for Him, He replied : " Know 
ye not that I must be about my father's business?" 
Jesus is always about his Father's business; 
always knocking at every man's door, trying to 
arrest his attention, and waiting for an invita- 
tion to come in and sup with him. He cannot be 
presumed ever to leave one of his children in a 
condition by night or by day when the process 
of their regeneration, which is the end and final 
purpose of their creation, cannot progress. 

When we cease to be susceptible of spiritual 
growth in this world our life in it necessarily 
ceases. 

God cannot be suspected of providing life and 
a terrestrial environment in this world for anj^ 
except to educate them for a higher life. A con- 
trary supposition must assume that the Omnipo- 
tent and the Omniscient could permit any waste of 
his energy. That is not supposable. Hence we 
are forced to the conclusion that if lunatics and 
idiots have reached their spiritual growth, and 
are capable of no more spiritual improvement, 
it is as idle to suppose that their Creator would 
continue to supply them with his breath of life 
as that He should continue to supply sap to a 

170 



Divine Energy Never Wasted 

dead tree. No one's days can be presumed to 
continue an hour longer than he possesses the 
ability to choose between good and evil and is 
capable of being fashioned into a less imperfect 
image of his Creator. It is for that, and that 
only, we are put into this world ; and there is no 
power willing and competent to keep us here a 
moment after that ability fails us. We are forced, 
therefore — at least, every Christian is forced — by 
a logical necessity to the conclusion that divine 
grace is just as operative with the wildest demo- 
niac and the most helpless idiot as it ever was 
with the apostles Paul and John. 

The most conspicuous feature of insanity is the 
more or less complete obscuration of the victim's 
mental appreciation of one or more of the most 
familiar laws which govern the phenomenal world. 
He seems to live — a part of the time, at least — 
in quite a different world from that in which sane 
people about him are living. He even becomes 
to himself an entirely different person or object 
from what he appears to be to others. 

Charles Lamb has told us that during the early 
part of his life he was constrained to retire to a 
lunatic asylum, where he was detained for sev- 
eral months. In a letter to his friend Coleridge, 
written a few years after his recovery, he said: 

" At some future time I will amuse you with an ac- 
count, as full as my memory will permit, of the strange 
turn my frenzy took. I look back upon it at times with 

171 



The Mystery of Sleep 

a gloomy kind of envy; for while it lasted I had many, 
many hours of pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, 
of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy 
till you have gone mad." 

Is not a lunatic in much the same condition 
as a person dreaming, partially sensible of the 
phenomenal world and partially insensible of it? 
He will talk coherently for a time about some 
things, incoherently about others at other times, 
but in a way that shows his mind is only partially 
alive to the relations of this world; so that what 
he says or does may be as inconsequential as 
what we ordinarily remember of a dream. Yet 
his mind is obviously quite as active when his 
talk is incoherent as when it is coherent. May 
he not be as sane as any other man appears to 
be in a dream? May not his attention be divided 
between the two worlds which, like the dreamer, 
he seems to inhabit? May not the society in 
which he finds himself at times when to others 
he seems insane be as real as any other? — and 
may not agencies be at work as constantly for his 
regeneration as for any other of God's children? 

Insanity has many causes, but the kind of 
insanit}^ with which we are most familiar results 
from a disproportionate activity of some psychic 
qualities: ambition, avarice, vanity, an undue 
estimate of our importance in the regulation of 
the world, which, whether inherited or acquired, 
induce a disproportionate activity of certain emo- 
172 



Lunacy is Disproportion 

tions, which gradually, like all our appetites, 
grow by what they feed on, until they overmaster 
the reason and disqualify one for taking the pre- 
cautions and avoiding the practices and habits 
for which they lust. 

One of the first evidences of this loss of balance 
is usually insomnia. Most suicides are, direct- 
ly or indirectly, attributable to the same cause. 
But where, I may be asked, are the evidences of 
divine love in such dispensations? That ques- 
tion may be most conveniently answered by ask- 
ing another: What would be the consequences 
of allowing a person whose vanity or ambition, 
or other inordinate appetite, led him to the in- 
dulgence of such excesses for its gratification, 
if its progress were not arrested by the impair- 
ment of other faculties that go to make up the 
balance of a healthy character, but over which 
his reason, without being seriously impaired, 
had ceased to have control? He would evidently 
become by degrees a monster — such a monster 
as to be capable of any crime, and entirely in- 
accessible to any rectifying spiritual influences. 

We are all of us more or less familiar with the 
perils we have providentially escaped through 
our disappointments and reverses in life. Are we 
not all in a certain sense like lunatics — victims 
of a more or less unbalanced mind? And is not 
the work of spiritual regeneration simply the 
effort, through divine aid, to restore that balance? 
And in the proportion that a lunatic is disquali- 

173 



The Mystery of Sleep 

fled to take a sensible and rational interest in 
the phenomenal world, may he not to that extent 
be made accessible to regenerating influences of 
a similar character with those we have supposed 
to be operative during the suspension of our con- 
sciousness in sleep? 

No one has ever ventured to sneer at Dryden's re- 
mark that " Great wits are sure to madness near 
allied/ ' One can easily be persuaded by a ref- 
erence to the biographies of men of genius that 
this poet's words deserve to be taken quite seri- 
ously. 

Lucretius, the greatest poet of ancient Italy, 
and Tasso, the greatest poet of modern Italy, 
both wrote the works to which they owe their 
fame with posterity during the interruptions of 
frequent attacks of lunacy. The former is said 
by St. Jerome to have died by his own hand at 
the comparatively early age of forty-four, leaving 
unfinished that greatest monument of Roman 
literary genius, the De Rerum Natura. 

Tasso, like Socrates, believed he had a familiar 
spirit, or genius, that was pleased to talk with 
him, and from whom he learned things never be- 
fore heard of. 

Caesar was an epileptic and subject to cerebral 
disorder. Charles V. was an epileptic; he took 
refuge from his throne in a monastery, where he 
had his own funeral rites celebrated in his pres- 
ence^ — two of the many evidences he gave of an 
unbalanced mind. His mother was insane, and 

174 



Lunacy is Disproportion 

his grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon, died, at 
the comparatively earty age of sixty-two, in a 
state of profound melancholia. 

Linnaeus died in a state of senile dementia. 

Raphael had more or less of the suicidal 
mania. 

Pascal could not bear to see his father and 
mother together, though pleased to see either 
separately; neither could he see water without 
transports of vexation. 

Walter Scott, during the latter portion of his 
life, had visions betokening an unbalanced mind. 

Michael Angelo attempted to starve himself to 
death, and was only saved by the interference of 
his physician. 

Richelieu had attacks of insanity. His elder 
brother committed suicide, and his sister also 
was insane. 

Descartes imagined himself followed by an in- 
visible person urging him to pursue his investi- 
gations in search of the Absolute. 

Goethe fancied he saw the image of himself 
coming to meet him. 

Cromwell had violent attacks of melancholia, 
and a sickly, neuropathic constitution from his 
birth. 

Jean Jacques Rousseau suffered all his life 
from an unbalanced mind, and not infrequently 
from attacks of acute delirium and maniacal ex- 
citation. He died from an apoplectic attack. 

Mohammed was epileptic, and claimed to be 
175 



The Mystery of Sleep 

a messenger from God and to have had inter- 
views with the Angel Gabriel. 

Moliere was a neuropath, and any delay or 
derangement of his plans w^ould throw him into 
convulsions. 

Mozart was subject to fainting fits before and 
during the composition of his famous " Requiem/' 
He imagined messengers were sent to him to 
announce his end. He died at the early age of 
thirty-six of cerebral hydropsy. 

Cuvier is said to have died of a disease of the 
nervous centres. He lost all his children by 
cerebral fever. 

Condillac was a somnambulist. 

Bossuet is known occasionally to have lost the 
faculty of speech, and even of understanding. 

Madame de Stael died in a delirium said to 
have lasted several months. She had a nervous 
habit of rolling between her fingers small strips 
of paper, an ample supply of which was kept 
on her mantel-piece. She had a nervous fear of 
being cold in the tomb, and desired to be enveloped 
in furs before burial. 

Swift from an early period of his life was queer, 
and " died at the top/' a violent maniac. He was 
called the "Mad Parson/' 

Shelley suffered from somnambulism, disturbing 
dreams, and an excitable and impetuous temper- 
ament, which increased with age. He was called 
"Mad Shelley." 

Samuel Johnson was a rrypochondriac, had 
176 



Lunacy is Disproportion 

hallucinations and convulsions, and was con- 
stantly apprehensive of insanity. 

Southey wrote verses before he was eight years 
of age, and died an imbecile. 

Cowper was attacked with melancholia at the 
age of twenty, from which he suffered for a year. 
It subsequently returned. He tells of attempts at 
suicide, and he would have hanged himself had 
not the rope broken from which he suspended 
himself. 

Keats was subject to fits of despondency, and 
was so nervous that the glitter of the sun or the 
sight of a flower made him tremble. 

Coleridge was a precocious child and had a 
morbid imagination. When thirty years of age 
he took to the use of opium. 

Burns tells us that his constitution from the 
beginning "was blasted with a deep, incurable 
taint of melancholia which poisons my existence/' 

George Eliot was extremely sensitive to terror 
in the night, and remained "a quivering fear" 
throughout her whole life. 

De Quincey, in consequence of general nervous 
irritability, took opium to excess. 

Alfred de Musset had attacks which George 
Sand described as manifesting a nervous con- 
dition approaching delirium. He had a suicidal 
inclination. He had hallucinations which com- 
pelled him to ask his brother to assist him in dis- 
tinguishing it from real things. 

Carlyle showed extreme irritability, and spoke 
177 



The Mystery of Sleep 

of himself in his diary: "Nerves all inflamed 
and torn up/ body and mind in a hag-ridden 
condition." 

Bach and Handel were both very irritable, 
great sufferers from nervous troubles, and both 
died of apoplexy. 

Newton in his latter years was subject to a 
melancholia which deprived him of all power of 
thought. In a letter to Locke he says that he 
"passed some months without having a consist- 
ency of mind." 

Alexander the Great had from infancy neurosis 
of the muscles of the neck, and died at the age of 
thirty-two, exhibiting all the symptoms of acute 
delirium tremens. Both his parents were disso- 
lute, and his brother was an idiot. 

Lamartine was a crank, like his father before 
him. 

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, was descended 
from a family exhibiting many peculiarities and 
mental disproportions approaching alienation. 

Pope was rickety and subject to hallucina- 
tions. 

Lord Byron was scrofulous, rachitic, imagined 
he was visited by a ghost, which he attributed 
to the over-excitability of his brain. Lord Dudley 
did not disguise his conviction that Byron was 
insane. 

Napoleon I. feared apoplexy and was subject 
to hallucinations. 

There is no occasion to enlarge this list, as it 

i 7 8 



Lunacy Providential 

might be indefinitely. In the instances we have 
selected there is sufficient evidence that insanity 
probably is, and certainly may be, a providential 
interruption of degenerating and pernicious ten- 
dencies. Even with our short sight, these ten- 
dencies may be traced to an unequal and dispro- 
portioned interest in some of our worldly affairs 
and the consequent enfeeblement of others in- 
tended to be regulating or compensating facul- 
ties. But it is blasphemous to suppose that the 
class of men so conspicuous for their usefulness 
in the world, to whose unbalanced minds attention 
has just been called, were not to the last, as 
much as ever, the objects of God's uninterrupt- 
ed and inexhaustible love and mercy. There 
is really no more reason for supposing there is 
such an interruption in the case of lunatics than 
there is for a like supposition in the case of those 
whose consciousness is suspended by sleep. The 
impairment of some of their faculties may have 
been rendered necessary to prevent their confir- 
mation in evils to which they may have been 
prone, just as all of us are more or less withheld 
in our slumbers, and thus made amenable to 
spiritual influences to which otherwise they would 
have been inaccessible. 

Let it not be supposed that the changes here 
referred to are physical or the results of morbid 
cerebration, as was so flippantly taught not many 
years ago by many eminent French physicians; 
for we have abundant medical authority to the 

179 



The Mystery of Sleep 

contrary. "Frequent autopsies/' says Chauvet,* 
"reveal no appreciable difference between the 
brain of a lunatic and a man of unimpaired men- 
tal integrity. Such is the affirmation of all con- 
scientious physicians who have made a special 
study of mental maladies." 

It is a medical aphorism as old at least as Hip- 
pocrates that a sufferer from a painful disease 
generally loses all consciousness of it on becoming 
deranged. A disorder of the mind replaces the 
disorder of the body. In illustration of this, De 
Bonnenhausen, on the authority of the chron- 
icler Bulan, Hist. Seer. i. 12, quotes the following 
experience of the grandmother of Mirabeau: 

"This femme bigote," as he calls her, "eighty 
years of age and emaciated to a skeleton, was 
attacked, in consequence of a wrong treatment 
for the gout, with a furious nymphomania. From 
that moment she seemed to renew her youth; 
her monthly courses reappeared. This healthy 
period lasted for four years, but she rapidly sank 
and expired with the return of reason/' 

Here is a case of a person experiencing for a 
series of years an extraordinary rejuvenescence 
of strength and respite from pain by being to a 
considerable extent cut off from ordinary relations 
and communication with the phenomenal world. 
She was bigote, says De Bonnenhausen. Was 



*Nouveaux Principes de Philosophie Medicate, par le Dr. N. 
M. Chauvet. 

180 



Unclean Spirits 

not Providence clearly dealing with this infirmit}' 
as it had once dealt with St. Paul's, by cutting 
off her relations with an environment which had 
developed that mental disease, and reducing her 
to a condition which protected her from its in- 
fluence, substituting a love for others, though on 
the natural plane, in the place, perhaps, of a mor- 
bid self -righteousness? 

When Jesus and his disciples came down from 
the Mount of Transfiguration there came a man 
who, kneeling down to Him, said, " Lord, have 
mercy on my son: for he is a lunatic and sore 
vexed: and oft-times he falleth into the fire, and 
oft into the water. And I brought him to thy 
disciples, and they could not cure him/' We 
are told that "Jesus rebuked the devil, and he 
departed out of him ; and the child was cured from 
that very hour." 

While Jesus was in the borders of Tyre and 
Sidon, a Syrophcenician woman whose young 
daughter had an unclean spirit "besought him 
that he would cast forth the devil out of her daugh- 
ter/ '. For the faith exhibited by this mother, He 
said : " Go thy way ; the devil is gone out of thy 
daughter. And when she was come to her house, 
she found the devil gone out and her daughter 
laid upon the bed." * 

The man with an unclean spirit, who could 
not be bound even with a chain, and whom no 

* Mark vii. 26-30. 
I8l 



The Mystery of Sleep 

man could tame, when he saw Jesus, ran and 
worshipped Him. Jesus bade the evil spirit come 
out of him, and the demoniac was left clothed 
and in his right mind. He then begged to remain 
with Jesus, but Jesus made a missionary of him, 
as later he did of Paul of Tarsus. * 

Jesus may be seen by the feeble-minded to-day 
just as distinctly as when seen by this demoniac 
in Syria. 

While we are permitted to assume that the in- 
sane and the idiotic, so far as they are detached 
from the phenomenal world, may be, to the same 
limited extent, in the condition of the sleeper and 
in a degree sharing the advantages which the 
condition of sleep is supposed to provide, it must 
not be inferred that any form or degree of in- 
sanity is in itself desirable, otherwise than as it 
tends to arrest spiritual tendencies of a more peril- 
ous character. 

Insanity may be presumed to be in most cases 
the fruit of either deliberate or hereditary ten- 
dencies which conflict with divine order. The 
cases with which we are all of us most familiar 
are of persons who have become insane by over- 
work or by resorting to artificial means for super- 
seding the demands of their constitution for sleep. 
As these excesses are commonly the results of 
inordinate ambition or vanity or greed, and when 
these spiritual infirmities reach a stage where 

* Mark v. 2-20. 
182 



Lunacy Arrests Spiritual Degeneration 

any voluntary arrest of them is hopeless, a merci- 
ful Providence may be presumed so to modify 
their relations with the phenomenal world as to 
prevent further spiritual degeneration. In some 
cases the ministrations of Jesus warrant us in 
thinking that the work of regeneration is allowed 
to progress. All that can be said with confidence 
of the influence of insanity is that in detaching- 
its victim from habitual this-worldliness it so far 
resembles the operation of sleep, and is a real and 
usually an unappreciated evidence of divine 
mercy. A French investigator has reached the 
conclusion that the brains of military men give 
out most quickly; that out of every 100,000 men 
of the army or naval profession, 199 are hope- 
less lunatics. Of the liberal professions, artists 
are the first to succumb to the brain-strain. Is 
there nothing in the inspirations and aspirations 
of these pursuits to explain these results? 



CHAPTER XII 

Why we are not permitted to be conscious of the ex- 
periences of the soul in sleep — How we should culti- 
vate sleep — Drugs hostile to sleep — Count Tolstoi on 
alcoholic stimulants — All virtues favor sleep ; all vices 
discourage it. 

IF by the immutable laws of our being the 
hours consecrated to sleep are, as I have attempted 
to show, of such vital importance to our spiritual 
development, the ordering of our life, so far as 
it may affect our sleep, assumes a corresponding 
importance. No argument is needed to prove 
that we should make it our study to avoid as far 
as possible everything calculated to interfere in 
the slightest degree with its completeness. All 
such disturbances may be presumed to come 
from our phenomenal life, and so far, at any 
rate, as they do, they impair the completeness 
of our isolation from the world and its works, 
and violate the sacred mysteries to which it is the 
presumptive purpose of sleep to admit the soul 
— our real self — for the reception of such spiritual 
instruction as we may be qualified to assimilate, 
without bringing away with us any knowiedge 
that can interfere with the freedom of our will 

184 



Why Unconscious of What Occurs in Sleep 

or with our personal responsibility for what we 
may do in our waking hours. 

I say without bringing away anything that 
would interfere with the freedom of our will, be- 
cause what goes on within us in our sleep is as 
sacred a mystery as any of the mysteries of our 
eternal sleep ; nor is it difficult to divine a sufficient 
purpose for that mystery. If we were as conscious 
of our sleeping as of our waking life, and if our 
external memory, as Swedenborg calls it, could 
bring away our experiences while in that state; 
could reveal to us the treasures of our interior 
memory, it would interfere with our freedom in 
precisely the same way and degree as if we could 
foresee the influence of our acts and plans of yes- 
terday upon all the future stages of our existence. 
Such knowledge would be fatal to our spiritual 
growth and to the freedom of our will, through 
which only righteousness thrives; would give 
place to a blind, senseless fatalism, 

We may speculate about the purposes of Provi- 
dence as revealed in the sequence of the events of 
our daily life, but we know nothing, and think 
little, if anything, of them when they occur. It 
is only long after their occurrence that we begin 
to realize how much more profoundly they af- 
fected the tenor of our lives than we had suspected 
they would; from what perils we had been pro- 
tected by what we regarded as grievous disap- 
pointments; from what temptations, which we 
could never have resisted, we had been shielded 

185 



The Mystery of Sleep 

by our ignorance, by our weaknesses, by dis- 
couragements, by poverty, by sickness, etc. If 
God in his providence makes us so blind to the 
consequence of what we do in our waking hours, 
the wisdom of which experience ultimately compels 
us not only to admit but to be thankful for, there 
is no reason to question the divine wisdom in con- 
cealing from us what it is trying to do for us in 
our sleep when the god of this world is disarmed 
and powerless. 

It would be tedious to enumerate all the things 
done in what is called civilized society that, con- 
sciously and unconsciously, interfere with the 
quality and quantity of our sleep. A volume 
would not suffice for such a record. I may only 
speak of them by classes. 

First in importance among these I would place 
what we take into our mouths under the name 
or disguise of nourishment. There is scarcely 
a table laid in all our broad land on which will 
not be found more or less of the enemies of whole- 
some sleep: condiments selected primarily to 
stimulate the appetite, but provoking to gluttony 
and animal indulgence, regardless of the divine 
purposes for which we were endowed with these 
appetites, and with power both to guide and con- 
trol them. It is a fact worthy of the profoundest 
consideration that about everything we take into 
our mouths, not simply for our nourishment, but 
to provoke our appetites and for the sole pleasure 
of gratifying them, discourages sleep. 
186 



Popular Enemies of Sleep 

"If one wishes to make others do wrong," 
says Count Tolstoi/" " he alcoholizes them. They 
make soldiers drunk before sending them into 
battle. At the time of the assault of Sebasto- 
pol all the French soldiers were drunk. It is 
well known that robbers, brigands, and pros- 
titutes cannot dispense with alcohol. All the 
world agrees that the consumption of these nar- 
cotics has for its object stifling the remorse of 
conscience; and yet, in cases where the use 
of these exhilarants does not result in assassi- 
nation, theft, and violence, they are not con- 
demned/ ' 

To the defence that a light exhilaration — that 
is to say, initial drunkenness, which is but a 
partial eclipse of the judgment — cannot produce 
very important consequences, the Count makes 
this clever reply: 

" A famous Russian painter one day corrected 
a picture made by one of his pupils. He gave a 
few touches of his pencil here and there, but the 
result was such, nevertheless, that the pupil cried 
out, 'You made but two or three marks on my 
picture, and I find it completely changed.' The 
painter replied, 'Art does not begin but where 
marks scarcely perceptible produce great changes/ 
These remarks," he adds, "are remarkably just, 
not only in relation to art, but all the conditions 
of human life." 

* Translated from an article published some years ago 
in the Revue Rose. 

187 



The Mystery of Sleep 

Dr. Franklin, in a letter written to a Miss on 
the art of procuring pleasant dreams, said: 

" In general, mankind, since the improvement of 
cookery, eat about twice as much as nature requires. 
Suppers are not bad, if we have not dined; but rest- 
less nights naturally follow hearty suppers after full 
dinners. Indeed, as there is a difference in constitu- 
tions, some rest well after these meals; it costs them 
only a frightful dream, and an apoplexy, after which 
they sleep till doomsday." 

Among the antisoporifics, next in importance 
come the apothecaries' drug - poisons. Of these 
there are very few — I fear none — the direct or 
secondary action of which is not hostile to sleep. 
The uncorrupted tastes and instincts of the beasts 
of the field reject them all, as well in sickness as 
in health. 

It is a curious illustration of the limitations 
of what we call civilization that the one art or 
science which we hedge about with the most ar- 
bitrary laws for the protection of its priesthood 
and ministrants, and which is relied upon to 
prevent or cure our diseases, should be the one 
organized professional body which practically 
employs few, if any, therapeutic agencies that 
do not impair, discourage, or prevent sleep, and 
to the same extent shorten life. If in the whole 
pharmacopoeia of those who claim to be "the 
regular medical faculty" there is a single drug 
which is not a poison and which is not more or 
188 



Drugs Enemies of Sleep 

less actively hostile to sleep, it is one which is 
scarcely, if ever, used, except to impress the im- 
agination rather than the disorder of the pa- 
tient. Should any of my readers think this 
statement an exaggeration they will find little 
difficulty in ascertaining that it is not. The 
homceopathists are compelled by the fundamental 
law of their therapeutics to ascertain the effects 
of every drug by testing them upon persons in 
sound health. In that way they have stored 
up in their literature most of all that is known 
of the direct effects of all the drugs that have 
proved to be sufficiently reactionary for therapeu- 
tical purposes, which means all drugs in gen- 
eral use. The reader has only to turn to Jahr's 
Manual of Medicine or Herring's Condensed Ma- 
teria Medica to satisfy himself of the insomniac 
influences which radiate from every apothecary's 
shop." 

* Here are a few drugs recorded by Jahr under a single 
initial letter, with the symptoms relating to sleep for which 
they are responsible : 

Aconitum napellus — Sleeplessness from anxiety, with 
constant agitation and tossing ; startings in sleep ; anxious 
dreams with nightmare. 

Agnus costus — Disturbed sleep, waking with a start. 

Alumina — Nocturnal sleep too light; frequent waking 
in the night ; nightmare ; during the night anxiety, agita- 
tion, and tossing about. 

Ambergris — Agitated sleep with anxious dreams; start- 
ings with fright. 

Ammoniac — Sleep unquiet during the night ; numerous 
and painful dreams. 

Ammonia, carbonate of — Nightmare when falling 
189 



The Mystery of Sleep 

With drug - poisons should be classed nearly, 
if not quite, all fermented drinks — the most costh* 
part of most people's diet who indulge in them 
at all — coffee, tea, tobacco, spices, and most of 
the constantly multiplying tonics and condiments 
of the table. All of them have a tendency, directh T 
or indirectly, to discourage or impair sleep, and, 
as such, are hostes humani generis. Their inter- 
ference with sleep, though perhaps the most seri- 
ous, is very far from being their only pathoge- 
netic influence. 

The' late Dr. Alonzo Clark, who for years stood 
quite at the head of his profession as a consult- 
ing physician in New York City, is quoted as au- 

asleep ; dreams of spectres, death, of vermin, and of quar- 
rels. 

Ammonium causticum — Disturbed sleep. 

Ammonium muriaticum — Restlessness before midnight ; 
many dreams, anxious, terrific, or lascivious ; nocturnal 
sweat after midnight. 

Anacardium orientale (Malacca bean) — Disturbed sleep 
in the night ; anxious dreams, disgusting or horrible, with 
cries ; lively dreams of projects, of fire, of diseases, of deaths, 
and of dangers. 

Angustura bark — Sleep disturbed by frequent dreams. 

Antimonium crudum — Waking with fright during the 
night ; dreams, anxious, horrible, voluptuous, or painful, 
and full of quarrelling. 

Arnica — Sleep full of anxious and terrible dreams and 
waking with starts and fright ; dreams of death, of mutilated 
bodies ; giddiness on waking. 

Arsenicum — During sleep, startings with fright, groans ; 
frequent dreams full of fears, threats, apprehensions. 

Assafcetida — Sleep unrefreshing, with tossing and fre- 
quent waking. 

Aurum — Restless sleep with anxious dreams. 

190 



All Drusjs Poisons 



r> 



thority for saying : " All curative agents, so called, 
are poisons, and, as a consequence, every dose di- 
minishes the patient's vitality/' I doubt whether 
this view of drugs would be seriously contested by 
any of his professional brethren of good standing. 

The late venerable Professor Joseph M. Smith, 
M.D., said : " All medicines which enter the circula- 
tion poison the blood in the same manner as do the 
poisons that produce the disease. Drugs do not 
cure disease. Digitalis has hurried thousands to 
the grave. Prussic acid was once extensively used 
in the treatment of consumption, both in Europe 
and America, but its reputation is lost. Thou- 
sands of patients were treated with it, but not a 
case was benefited. On the contrary, hundreds 
were hurried to the grave/' 

Digitalis is regarded by old -school physicians 
as a specific for heart-failure. Here are its symp- 
toms as recorded in Jahr's manual : 

Sleep — Drowsiness in the day and somnolency in- 
terrupted by convulsive vomiting; at night, halt sleep 
with agitation ; nocturnal sleep, interrupted by anxious 
dreams, with starts. 

R. Clarke Newton, in his treatise on Opium and 
Alcohol, says : 

" Sleeplessness means not merely unrest, but starva- 
tion of the cerebrum. The only cause for regret in 
these cases is that the blunder should ever be commit- 
ted of supposing that a stupefying drug which throws 
the brain into a condition that mimics and burlesques 

191 



The Mystery of Sleep 

sleep can do good. It is deceptive to give narcotics 
in a case of this type. The stupor simply masks the 
danger. Better far let the sleepless patient exhaust 
himself than stupefy him. Chloral bromide and the 
rest of the poisons that produce a semblance of sleep 
are so many snares in such cases. Sleeplessness is 
a malady of the most formidable character, but it is 
not to be treated by intoxicating the organ upon which 
the stress of the trouble falls. Suicide, which occurs 
at the very outset of derangement, and is apt to appear 
a sane act, is the logical issue of failure of nutrition that 
results from want of sleep." 

It is a fact now recognized by the medical pro- 
fession that the use of narcotics, fermented liquors, 
and other intoxicants by which the people of all 
nations seek pleasure — simple oblivion of the 
troubles of life or of its sorrows, of its chagrins 
or of destitution — produce temporarily precisely 
the condition in which a man finds himself in a 
dream. The faculty explain it by lesions, ob- 
structions, disorganizations of tissues, cells, nerve 
centres, liver and kidneys, etc. These are phys- 
ical changes incident to the use of these dis- 
organizing agencies. In point of fact, it is these 
disorganizing agencies that produce the partial, 
sometimes temporary, sometimes chronic, in- 
sensibility to mental or physical troubles by im- 
pairing our consciousness of them, just as our 
consciousness of them is totally suspended in 
sleep and partially suspended in dreams when 
we have begun to awake. These dreams are 

192 



Alcoholic Dreams 

sometimes prolonged, and result in what is com- 
monly termed dementia. 

Lasegue tells us that the alcoholic delirium 
is not a delirium, but a dream.* Max - Simon 
says : " The alcoholic patient commences his de- 
lirium in his dream during sleep and continues 
it on awaking, while other lunatics, melancholies, 
paralytics, maniacs, find in sleep a truce to their 
delirium/' f 

At first the dream of the alcoholic appears as a 
passing trouble and ceases on awakening. It is 
only a nightmare. After a while the dream is 
prolonged beyond the awakening, and it exte- 
riorizes itself in a sort of tranquillized delirium. 
Finally, auto - intoxication reaches its maximum 
in that peculiar mental state described first by an 
eminent French physician as mental confusion. 
The recollection of the dream may survive the 
dream itself for some time, and become a sort of 
subacute delirium, to which Baillarger has given 
the name of fixed ideas.% 

While this similarity between dreams and a per- 
son intoxicated by narcotics, alcoholics, hashish, 
or any of the thousand drugs to which people 
have recourse for temporary alleviation of pain 
or sorrow, distress or depression of any kind, is 

* Lasegue, Archives Generates de Medecine. 1881. 

f Max-Simon, Le Monde des Reves. Paris, 1882. 

t Baillarger, " De l'lnfluence de l'Etat Intermediaire a la 
Veille et au Sommeil sur la Production des Hallucinations." 
Annates Medico-Psychologiques. 1845. 

*3 193 



The Mystery of Sleep 

so universally recognized by the medical faculty, it 
seems to have occurred to none of them that the 
remedy for relief in every case is precisely the 
same as that which is sought through sleep — to 
make us insensible to our troubles and forget the 
world in which they originate. Their similarity 
to dreams consists in the insensibility produced 
by these drugs — that is, the partial suspension of 
consciousness. What a deplorable fact it is that, 
instead of sleep, so large a proportion of the hu- 
man race resort to these noxious substitutes for 
it ! What a mercy that where the will is too weak 
to resist the temptation to resort to these substi- 
tutes, "the wisdom of their wise men shall per- 
ish, and the understanding of their prudent men 
shall be hid"!* 

Then comes the strife for wealth, and power, 
and position among men ; the undue accumulation 
of cares and responsibilities, the result in most 
cases of unbridled ambition, vanity, or greed. 

It is the middle-aged and old who suffer most 
from this infirmity. 

" Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye, 
And where he lodges sleep can never lie; 
But where unbruised youth, with unstufTed brain, 
Doth crouch his limbs, there sleep doth reign." 

Whenever a man has reached threescore - and - 
ten, and, in railway parlance, is started on the 

* Isaiah xxix. 14. 
194 



Nature an Inexorable Creditor 

down grade, he should study to simplify his life 
so as never to be required to draw upon his reserves, 
nor work under pressure, or with a conscious 
overdraft of nervous force. A neglect of this pre- 
caution is pretty certain to interfere with both the 
quantity and quality of our sleep, and sooner or 
later to compel a resort to stimulants of one kind 
or another, by which we borrow for the day the 
strength of to-morrow, thus speedily to become 
hopelessly indebted to nature, the most inexorable 
of creditors. 

Speaking of reports, which but too frequently 
meet our eyes in the public prints, of men promi- 
nent in religious movements who have disgraced 
themselves and discredited the faith they professed 
by ignominious peculations, embezzlements, and 
frauds, the late Dr. A. P. Peabody, of Harvard 
University, said: 

" We are not surprised that these instances have 
been placed and kept prominently before the community ; 
for such cases are so rare as justly to arrest grave at- 
tention and excite emphatic comment. So far as we 
know, they are, all of them, cases in which there had 
been for a long period such an engrossment in multifari- 
ous, crowding, and perplexing business operations that 
the religious life was physically impossible, the quiet- 
ness essential to devotion unattainable, supersensual 
themes of thought excluded by a necessity, self-imposed 
indeed, but imposed — there is reason to believe — before 
the first steps in the direction of overt guilt and shame. 
No Christian of sane mind will pretend or imagine that 

195 



The Mystery of Sleep 

church-going with the inward ear closed and deafened, 
the form of Christian communion without the spirit of 
the cross, Sunday overlaid by the cares of the preced- 
ing and the forecast shadows of the coming week, are a 
moral specific ; and many who call, and perhaps think, 
themselves Christians are in intense need of precisely 
the lessons which these disasters among their own brother- 
hood may teach." 

All the appetites, propensities, lusts, and pas- 
sions which we cannot control are incidental to, 
and evidences of, our unregenerate nature; are 
the weaknesses of the flesh which it is the end 
and purpose of our probationary life on earth 
to subdue. It is a fact most important, early to 
learn and never to lose sight of, that all these 
appetites, propensities, and passions are unre- 
lenting enemies of sleep. It is the most impres- 
sive illustration of the inflexible logic of Provi- 
dence that as they all, if allowed free rein, tend to 
impair the health, blunt the senses one by one, 
diminish, and finally extinguish, the enjoyment 
they were designed to yield ; they, in that, way, 
like old age, are permitted to serve in a measure 
the purposes of sleep, in detaching man from the 
world by depriving him of the means of enjoying 
what he persists in abusing, and thus of "with- 
drawing him from his purpose, and in keeping 
him from the pit." 

It would be well for every one to realize that all 
the virtues favor sleep and all the vices discour- 
age it. In the gratification of our appetites it is 

196 



Nature's Rebuke of Intemperance 

our highest duty to respect the laws of our being 
which impose self-control. Whether we eat too 
much, or drink too much, or devote too large a 
portion of our time and strength to any employ- 
ment or amusement, the first rebuke which nature 
administers for such intemperance is a change in 
the quantity or quality of our sleep; conscience, 
attended by the dragons of remorse, follows us to 
our chamber and tells us that sleep shall not re- 
fresh us until we repent of our excesses. In the 
degree in which we respect the laws of our being, 
which are the ordinances of our Creator, will be 
the sufficiency of our rest. In the degree that we 
disregard them will be its insufficiency. 

The desire — nay, the necessity — for sleep should 
be regarded as a providential arrangement to 
induce us to cultivate the virtues most favorable 
to its enjoyment, just as hunger and thirst are 
the agents of Providence for teaching us to be 
frugal, industrious, and temperate, that they may 
be reasonably gratified. 

If these things be true about sleep, they obviously 
impose duties upon the pulpit, upon the press, 
and upon all human society which are sadly neg- 
lected. 



APPENDIX A 

Ralph Waldo Emerson's estimate of Sweden- 
borg: 

"... Emanuel Swedenborg, . . . who appears to 
his contemporaries a visionary, ... no doubt led the 
most real life of any man then in the world ; and now, 
when the royal and ducal Frederics ... of that day 
have slid into oblivion, he begins to spread himself 
into the minds of thousands. As happens in great 
men, he seemed, by the variety and amount of his powers, 
to be a composition of several persons, like the giant 
fruits which are matured in gardens by the union of 
four or five single blossoms. . . . He was a scholar 
from a child. . . . The genius which was to penetrate 
the science of the age with a far more subtile science, 
to pass the bounds of space and time, venture into the 
dim spirit-realm, to attempt to establish a new religion 
in the world, began its letters in quarries and forges, in 
the smelting-pot and crucible, in ship-yards and dissect- 
ing-rooms. No one man is, perhaps, able to judge of the 
merits of his works on so many subjects. ... It seems 
that he anticipated much science of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. . . . His superb speculation, as from a tower, 
over nature and arts, without ever losing sight of the 
texture and sequence of things, almost realizes his 
own picture in the Principia of the original integrity 
of man. . . . One of the missouriums and mastodons 
of literature, he is not to be measured by whole colleges 

199 



Appendix A 

of ordinary scholars. His stalwart presence would 
nutter the gowns of a university. Our books are false 
by being fragmentary. . . . But Swedenborg is sys- 
tematic, and respective of the world in every sentence; 
all the means are orderly given; his faculties work 
with astronomic punctuality, and his admirable writing 
is pure from all pertness and egotism. He named his 
favorite views, the Doctrine of Forms, the Doctrine of 
Series and Degrees, the Doctrine of Influx, the Doctrine 
of Correspondence. His statement of these doctrines 
deserves to be studied in his books. Not every man 
can read them, but they will reward him who can. . . . 
His writings would be a sufficient library to a lonely 
and athletic student ; and the Economy of the Animal 
Kingdom is one of those books which, by the sustained 
dignity of thinking, is an honor to the human race. . . . 
The Animal Kingdom is a book of wonderful merits. 
It was written with the highest end — to put science and 
the soul, long estranged from each other, at one again. . . . 
His religion thinks for him and is of universal applica- 
tion. He turns it on every side ; it fits every part of 
life, interprets and dignifies every circumstance, . . . 
a teaching which accompanied him all day, . . . into 
his thinking, . . . into society, . . . into natural ob- 
jects, . . . and opened the future world by indicating 
the continuity of the same laws. . . . That slow but 
commanding influence which he has acquired . . . 
must be excessive, . . . and have its tides before it 
subsides into a permanent amount." 

Rev. Edwin Paxton Hood's estimate of Swe- 
denborg : 

" Swedenborg was one of the profoundest mathema- 
ticians of his age, a deep and acute thinker, a subtle 
200 



Appendix A 

logician, a various and versatile scholar — above all, a 
calm and most quiet bookman and penman, indisposed 
for any company, and never seen to court the company 
of the ignorant and the vulgar — ever the resort of the 
fanatic; a man of few words, until compelled to talk, 
or talking for a purpose; cool in temperament; never 
rocked by passion or impulse ; always, as far as human- 
ity can be, in equilibrium, weighing all his thoughts 
and all his actions ; perpetually bent upon giving rea- 
sons for things ; a man of strong inductive habits and 
powers, and consistent ; a whole life of invariable rec- 
titude. He was a Titan, and must take his place among 
the very highest and widest minds of our world/' 

Thomas Carlyle's estimate of Swedenborg : 

" A man of great and indisputable cultivation, strong, 
mathematical intellect, and the most pious, seraphic 
turn of mind; a man beautiful, lovable, and tragical 
to me, with many thoughts in him which, when I in- 
terpret them for myself, I find to belong to the high 
and perennial in human thought. Whatever I may 
conjecture in my own defence about the strange im- 
pediments and unconquerable imprisoning conditions 
under which he had to live and to meditate, surely I 
am very far, indeed, from ranking him, or those that 
honestly follow him, under any dishonorable category." 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's estimate of Sweden- 
borg : 

" I can venture to assert that as a moralist Sweden- 
borg is above all praise ; and that as a naturalist, psy- 
chologist, and theologian he has strong and varied 
20T 



Appendix A 

claims on the gratitude and admiration of the profes- 
sional and philosophical student." 

Henry James's estimate of Swedenborg : 

" I fully concede to Swedenborg an extreme sobriety 
of mind displayed under all the exceptional circum- 
stances of his career, and which ends by making us 
feel at last his every word to be almost insipid with 
veracity. I cordially appreciate, moreover, the rare 
destitution of wilfulness which characterizes all his 
researches; or, rather, the childlike docility of spirit 
which leads him to seek and to recognize, under all 
the most contradictory aspects of nature, the footsteps 
of the Highest. 

" His books are a dry, unimpassioned, unexaggerated 
exposition of the things he daily saw and heard in the 
world of spirits, and of the spiritual laws which these 
things illustrate; with scarcely any effort whatever 
to blink the obvious outrage his experiences offer to 
sensuous prejudice, or to conciliate any interest in his 
reader which is not prompted by the latter's own original 
and unaffected relish of the truth. Such sincere books, 
it seems to me, were never before written." 

An estimate of Swedenborg by the late Hon. 
Theophilus Parsons, for twenty-two years profess- 
or in the Cambridge Law School : 

" I regard him as a man of remarkable ability and 
great and varied culture, taught, as no other man ever 
was taught, truths which no other man ever learned; 
and thus instructed that he might introduce among 
men a new system of truth or doctrine, excelling in 
202 



Appendix A 

character and exceeding in value any system of truth 
before known; a new gift, demanding, as the instru- 
ment by which it could be communicated, a man not 
only possessing extraordinary capacity and cultivation, 
but in both capacity and cultivation definitely adapted 
to the peculiar work he had to do." 



APPENDIX B 

Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin.* 

" I have frequently conversed with these three lead- 
ing Reformers of the Christian Church, and in that 
way have learned what the state of their life has been, 
from their first entrance into the spiritual world up to 
the present time." 

Luther. 

" As for Luther, from the time when he first went to 
the spiritual world he was a most vehement propagator 
and defender of his dogmas, and his zeal for them 
increased as the number of those from the earth who 
agreed with and favored him increased. A house 
was given him there like the one he had in the life 
of the body at Eisleben. In the centre of this house 
he erected a sort of throne, somewhat elevated, where 
he sat ; he admitted hearers through the open door, and 
arranged them in order ; nearest to himself he invited 
those who were the more favorable to him ; behind them 
he placed those less favorable, and then he made speeches 
to them, occasionally permitting questions in order 
that he might obtain a kind of clew whereby to recom- 
mence the web of his discourse. Owing to this general 
favor, he at length imbibed a power of persuasion, which 
is so efficacious in the spiritual world that no one can 

* SwedenboTg's True Christian Religion, nos. 796-799. 
204 



Appendix B 

resist it or speak against what is said. But as this 
was a kind of incantation used by the ancients, he was 
forbidden to speak from that power of persuasion any- 
more ; and after this, as before, he taught from the mem- 
ory and understanding together. This power of per- 
suasion, which is a kind of incantation, springs from 
self-love, owing to which it finally becomes of such a 
nature that when any one contradicts he not only at- 
tacks the subject in question, but also the person him- 
self. This was the state of Luther's life up to the time 
of the last judgment, which took place in the spiritual 
world in the year 1757 ; but a year after that he was 
removed from his first house to another, and at the 
same time underwent a change of state. And in this 
state, having heard that I, who was in the natural world, 
spoke with those in the spiritual world, he, among 
others, came to me; and after some questions and an- 
swers he perceived that there is at this day an end of 
the former church and the beginning of a new church, 
of which Daniel prophesied, and which the Lord himself 
foretold in the evangelists; he also perceived that this 
new church was meant by the New Jerusalem in Revela- 
tion, and by the everlasting gospel which the angel 
flying in the midst of heaven preached to the inhabitants 
of the earth (xiv. 6). At this he became very angry 
and railed. But as he perceived that the new heaven 
(which was formed, and is still forming, of those who 
acknowledge the Lord alone as the God of heaven and 
earth, according to his words in Matt, xxviii. 18) [in- 
creased], and as he observed the number of his own 
congregations daily diminishing, he ceased his railing 
and came nearer to me, and began to talk with me more 
familiarly. And after he had been convinced that he 
had not derived his principal dogma of justification by 
205 



Appendix B 

faith alone from the Word, but from his own intelligence, 
he suffered himself to be instructed respecting the Lord, 
charity, true faith, free-will, and redemption also, and 
this exclusively from the Word. At length, after being 
convinced, he began to favor more and more those truths 
of which the new church is formed, and finally to con- 
firm himself in them. At this time he was with me 
daily; and then, as often as he called those truths to 
mind, he began to laugh at his former dogmas as things 
diametrically opposed to the Word. I heard him say: 
' Do not be surprised at my seizing upon justification 
by faith alone, excluding charity from its spiritual 
essence, also taking away from men all free-will in 
things spiritual, and affirming other things that depend 
on faith alone once accepted, as links on a chain, in- 
asmuch as my object was to break away from the Roman 
Catholics, and this object I could not otherwise compass 
and attain. I, therefore, do not wonder at my own 
errors, but I do wonder that one crazy man could make 
so many others crazy.' As he said this he looked at 
some dogmatic writers beside him, men of celebrity 
in his time, faithful followers of his doctrine, who saw 
nothing contradictory to those dogmas in the sacred 
Scripture, although it does contradict them plainly. 
It was told me by the examining angels that this leader 
was in a state of conversion before many others who 
had confirmed themselves in the doctrine of justification 
by faith alone, because in his childhood, before he un- 
dertook the Reformation, he had imbibed the dogma of 
the pre-eminence of charity; and for this reason also, 
both in his writings and in his discourses, he taught 
charity so notably ; and as a consequence, justifying faith 
with him was implanted in his external-natural man, 
but had not taken root in his internal-spiritual man. 
206 



Appendix B 

It is otherwise, however, with those who in their child- 
hood have confirmed themselves against the spirituality 
of charity, which also takes place of itself while justi- 
fication by faith alone is being established by confirma- 
tions. I have conversed with the Prince of Saxony, 
with whom Luther had been associated in the world, 
and he told me that he had often upbraided Luther, 
especially for separating charity from faith, and de- 
claring the latter to be saving and the former not, when, 
nevertheless, not only does the sacred Scripture unite 
those two universal means of salvation, but Paul also 
places charity before faith, when he says, 'And now 
abideth faith, hope, charity, these three ; but the greatest 
of these is charity' (i Cor. xiii. 13). But he said that 
Luther as often replied that he could not do otherwise, 
because of the Roman Catholics. This prince is among 
the happy." 

MELANCTHON. 

" As to what the lot of Melancthon was when he first 
entered the spiritual world, and what it was afterwards, 
I have been permitted to learn many things, not only 
from the angels, but also from himself, for I have con- 
versed with him repeatedly — yet not so frequently as 
with Luther, nor so near to him. I have not conversed 
with him so frequently nor so near, because he could 
not approach me as Luther did, for the reason that he 
had given his exclusive attention to justification by 
faith alone, but not to charity; and I was surrounded 
by angelic spirits who were principled in charity, and 
they interfered with his approach to me. I heard that 
when he first entered the spiritual world a house was 
prepared for him like that in which he had dwelt in 
the world. This also takes place with the most of new- 
207 



Appendix B 

comers, owing to which they do not know but they are 
still in the natural world, and the time elapsed since 
their death seems to them merely as a sleep. Everything 
in his room was also like what he formerly had : he had 
the same kind of a table, the same kind of a secretary 
with drawers, and also the same kind of a library; so 
that as soon as he came there, as if he had just awakened 
from a sleep, he seated himself at the table and con- 
tinued his writing, and that, too, on the subject of justi- 
fication by faith alone, and so on for several days, say- 
ing nothing whatever about charity. The angels, per- 
ceiving this, asked him through messengers why he 
did not write about charity also. He replied that there 
was nothing belonging to the church in charity, for if 
it were to be received as in any way an essential prin- 
ciple of the church, man would also attribute to him- 
self the merit of justification, and consequently of sal- 
vation, and thus he would also rob faith of its spiritual 
essence. When the angels who were over his head 
perceived this, and when the angels who were associated 
with him when he was outside of his house heard it, 
they all withdrew ; for angels are associated with every 
new-comer at the beginning. A few weeks after this oc- 
currence the things that he used in his room began to 
be obscured and at length to disappear, until at last 
there was nothing left there but the table, paper, and 
inkstand; and, moreover, the walls of his room seemed 
to be plastered with lime, and the floor to be covered 
with yellow bricks, and his clothing to become coarser. 
Wondering at this, he inquired of those about him why 
it was so; and he was told that it was because he had 
removed charity from the church, which was, never- 
theless, its heart. But as he often denied this, and 
again commenced to write about faith as the one only 
208 



Appendix B 

essential of the church, and the means of salvation, 
and to remove charity more and more, he suddenly 
seemed to himself to be under ground in a certain prison, 
where there were others like him. And when he wished 
to go out he was detained, and it was announced to 
him that no other lot awaited those who thrust charity 
and good works outside of the doors of the church. 
But inasmuch as he had been one of the Reformers 
of the church, he was released from that prison by the 
Lord's command, and sent back to his former room, 
where there was nothing but the table, paper, and ink- 
stand. But still, owing to his confirmed ideas, he be- 
daubed the paper with the same error, so that he could 
not be kept from being alternately sent down to his 
captive fellows and sent back again. When sent back, 
he appeared in a garment made of a hairy skin, because 
faith without charity is cold. He told me himself that 
there was another room adjoining his own in the rear, 
in which there were three tables, at which sa + men like 
himself, who had also exiled charity, and that a fourth 
table also sometimes appeared there, on which were 
seen monstrous things in various forms, by which, 
however, they were not frightened from their work. 
He said that he conversed with these others, and was 
confirmed by them daily. After some time, however, 
incited by fear, he began to write something about 
charity; but what he wrote on the paper one day he 
did not see the next ; for this happens to every one there 
when he commits anything to paper from the external 
man only, and not at the same time from the internal, 
thus from compulsion and not from freedom. It is 
obliterated of itself. But after the establishment by 
the Lord of the new heaven was begun, by the light 
from this heaven he began to think that perhaps he 
14 209 



Appendix B 

might be in error ; so that, owing to anxiety about his 
lot, he felt impressed upon him some interior ideas re- 
specting charity. In this state he consulted the Word , 
and then his eyes were opened, and he saw that it was 
all filled with love to God and love to tlie neighbor, so 
that it was as the Lord says : on these two command- 
ments hang the law and the prophets, that is, the whole 
Word. From this time he was transferred more in- 
teriorly to the southwest, and so to another house, from 
which he conversed with me, saying that his writings 
on charity did not then disappear as formerly, but ap- 
peared obscurely the next day. One thing I wondered 
at, that when he walked his steps had a striking sound, 
like those of a man walking with iron heels on a stone 
pavement. To this must be added that when any novi- 
tiate from the world entered his room to talk with him 
or see him, he would summon one from among spirits 
given to magic, who by fantasy could call up various 
beautiful shapes, and who then adorned his chamber 
with ornaments and flowered tapestry, and also with 
the appearance of a library in the centre. As soon as 
the visitors were gone, however, these shapes vanished, 
and the former plastering and emptiness returned. 
But this was when he was in his former state/' 

Calvin 

" Of Calvin I have heard the following: I. When he 
first went to the spiritual world he would not believe 
but that he was still in the world where he was born; 
and although he heard from the angels associated with 
him first in order that he was then in their world, and 
not in his former one, he said, ' I have the same body, 
the same hands, and similar senses/ But the angels 
210 



Appendix B 

instructed him to the effect that he was then in a sub- 
stantial body, and that he was formerly not only in 
that same body, but also in a material one, which in- 
vested the substantial; and that the material body had 
been cast off, the substantial body, from which a man 
is a man, remaining. This he at first understood ; 
but the day afterwards he returned to his former be- 
lief, that he was still in the world where he was born. 
This was because he was a sensual man, having no 
belief but what he could draw from the objects of the 
bodily senses ; from this arose the fact that all the dog- 
mas of his faith were conclusions drawn from his self- 
derived intelligence, and not from the Word. His quoting 
the Word was in order to win the assent of the common 
people. 2. After this first period, the angels having 
left him, he wandered about inquiring for those who 
in ancient times believed in predestination ; and he was 
told that they had been removed from that place, and 
shut up and covered over, and there was no way open 
to them except in a backward direction under the earth ; 
but that the disciples of Godeschalk still went about 
freely, and sometimes assembled in a place called, in 
spiritual language, Pyris. And as he longed for their 
company, he was conducted to an assembly where some 
of them were standing ; and when he came among them 
he was in his heart's delight, and bound himself to 
them by interior friendship. 3. But after the followers 
of Godeschalk were led away to their brethren in the 
cavern Calvin became tired; he, therefore, sought here 
and there for an asylum, and was finally received into 
a certain society, composed wholly of simple-minded 
persons, some of whom were also religious; and when 
he saw that they knew nothing about predestination, 
and could not understand anything about it, he betook 
211 



Appendix B 

himself to one corner of the society, and there hid him- 
self for a long time ; nor did he open his mouth on any 
ecclesiastical subject. This was providential, in order 
that he might withdraw from his error respecting pre- 
destination, and that the ranks of those who after the 
Synod of Dort adhered to that detestable heresy might 
be filled up ; they were all gradually sent away to their 
fellows in the cavern. 4. At length it was asked by 
the modern Predestinarians, Where is Calvin? And 
after a search he was found on the confines of a certain 
society consisting exclusively of simple-minded persons. 
He was, therefore, called away from there, and conducted 
to a certain governor who was filled with similar dregs. 
This governor, therefore, took him into his house and 
guarded him, and this until the new heaven began to 
be established by the Lord; and then, as his guardian 
governor was cast out together with his troop, Calvin 
betook himself to a certain house of harlotry, and re- 
mained there for some time. 5. And as he then en- 
joyed the liberty of wandering about, and also of coming 
near to the place where I was stopping, I was permitted 
to converse with him. At first I spoke of the new heaven 
which at this day is being formed by those who ac- 
knowledge the Lord alone as the God of heaven and 
earth, according to his words in Matt, xxviii. 18. I 
told him that they believe that He and the Father are 
one (John x. 30), that He is in the Father and the Father 
in Him, that whosoever sees and knows Him sees and 
knows the Father also (John xiv. 6-1 1), and that thus 
there is one God in the church as in heaven. At first, 
when I said this, he was as usual silent ; but after half 
an hour he broke the silence and said : ' Was not Christ 
a man, the son of Mary, the wife of Joseph? How 
can a man be worshipped as God?' I answered, ' Is 
212 



Appendix B 

not Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Saviour, both God 
and man?' He replied, 'He is both God and man; 
nevertheless the divinity is not his, but the Father's/ 
I asked, ' Where, then, is Christ?' He answered, ' In 
the lowest parts of heaven, as He proved by his humilia- 
tion before the Father and by suffering himself to be 
crucified/ To this he added some witty remarks about 
the worship of Him, which then broke forth from the 
world into his memory, the sum of which was, that 
the worship of Christ was nothing but idolatry, and he 
wanted to add something horrible about that worship; 
but the angels who were with me shut his lips. But 
I, being zealous to convert him, said, ' The Lord our 
Saviour is not only both God and Man, but in Him, 
moreover, God is Man and Man is God/ And this I 
confirmed by Paul's saying, ' That in Him dwelleth 
all the fulness of divinity bodily ' (Col. ii. 9) ; and by 
John's, ' That He is the true God and eternal life ' (1 
Epistle v. 20) ; as also from the words of the Lord him- 
self, ' That it is the will of the Father that whosoever 
believes on the Son hath eternal life, and that he who 
believes not shall not see life, but the wrath of God abid- 
eth on him' (John hi. 36; vi. 40); and, finally, by what 
is called the Athanasian Creed, which declares that in 
Christ, God and Man are not two but one, and are in 
one Person, like the soul and body in man. Hearing 
this, he replied : ' What are all those things which 
you have presented from the Word but empty sounds? 
Is not the Word the book of all heresies, and so. like 
the weathercocks on housetops and ships' masts, which 
turn every way according to the wind? It is predes- 
tination alone that determines all things pertaining to 
religion; this is the habitation and tabernacle where 
they all meet ; and faith, through which come justifica- 
213 



Appendix B 

tion and salvation, is there the innermost place and 
sanctuary. Has any man free-will in spiritual things? 
Is not the whole of salvation gratuitous? Any argu- 
ments, therefore, against these principles, and so against 
predestination, I listen to and value as much as I do 
eructations from the stomach or the rumbling of the 
bowels. Hence I have thought that a temple wherein 
they teach anything else from the Word, and the crowd 
there congregated, are like a pen of beasts containing 
both sheep and wolves, the latter being muzzled, how- 
ever, by the laws of civil justice, lest they should attack 
the sheep (by the sheep I mean the predestined); and 
I regard the preaching and praying there like so much 
hiccoughing. But I will give you my confession of 
faith ; it is this : There is a God, and He is omnipotent ; 
and there is no salvation for any but those who are 
elected and predestined to heaven by God the Father; 
and all others are condemned to their lot, that is, to their 
fate.' Hearing this, I retorted, with much warmth, 
' What you say is impious. Begone, wicked spirit! 
Since you are in the spiritual world, do you not know 
there is a heaven and a hell, and that predestination 
involves that some are enrolled for heaven and some 
for hell? Can you, then, form to yourself any other 
idea of God than as of a tyrant, who admits His favorites 
into the city and sends the rest to the rack? You ought 
to be ashamed of yourself ' I then read to him what 
is written in the dogmatic book of the evangelical Prot- 
estants, called Formula Concordiae, about the erroneous 
doctrine of the Calvinists respecting the worship of 
the Lord and predestination. Respecting the worship 
of the Lord, as follows : ' It is damnable idolatry, if 
the confidence and faith of the heart are placed in Christ, 
not only according to his divine, but also according to 

214 



Appendix B 

his human, nature, and the honor of worship is directed 
to both.' And respecting predestination, as follows: 
' Christ did not die for all men, but only for the elect. 
God has created the greater part of men for eternal dam- 
nation, and does not wish that this part should be con- 
verted and live. The elect and born again cannot lose 
faith and the Holy Spirit, although they should commit 
all kinds of great sins and crimes. But those who 
are not elected are necessarily damned, nor can they 
attain to salvation even if they were to be baptized a 
thousand times, to partake of the sacrament daily, and, 
moreover, to lead as holy and blameless a life as it is 
ever possible to live ' (from the Leipsic edition of 1756, 
pp. 837, 838). After reading this, I asked him whether 
this which was written in that book was from his doc- 
trine or not. He said that it was, but that he did not 
remember whether or not those very words had flowed 
from his pen, although they might have flowed from 
his lips. All the servants of the Lord hearing this, 
withdrew from him, and he betook himself hastily to 
a way that led to a cave which is occupied by those 
who have confirmed in themselves the execrable dogma 
of predestination. I afterwards conversed with some 
of those imprisoned in that cave and asked about their 
lot. They said that they were compelled to labor for 
food, that all were enemies of each other, that each 
sought an occasion to do evil to the other, and also did it 
whenever he found the slightest opportunity, and that 
this was the delight of their lives. On predestination 
and' the predestinarians, see also what is said above, 
n. 485-488. 

" I have also conversed with many others, both with 
followers of these three men and with heretics [or other 
sects] ; and respecting all of them I was enabled to form 

215 



Appendix B 

this conclusion: that whoever among them have lived 
a life of charity, and still more those who have loved 
truth because it is truth, in the spiritual world suffer 
themselves to be instructed, and accept the doctrines of 
the new church; while, on the other hand, those who 
have confirmed themselves in falsities of religion, and 
also those who have lived an evil life, do not suffer them- 
selves to be instructed. These latter remove step by 
step from the new heaven, and associate themselves 
with their like who are in hell, where they confirm them- 
selves more and more obstinately against the worship 
of the Lord, even to such an extent that they cannot 
bear to hear the name of Jesus. But it is the reverse 
in heaven, where all unanimously acknowledge the 
Lord as the God of heaven." 



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